Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 17, 2005

It reeks of staged theater: three men in one room talking endlessly.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 16, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 52/100 | Apr 9, 2001

Needlessly convoluted storytelling, talkiness and misplaced narrative emphasis.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

While the line-readings are often dead-on, Fishburne's movie suffers from the usual one-room claustrophobia and Mametian repetitions.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

While this cautionary tale of brotherhood gone wrong doesn't exactly break new ground, it certainly shows off its writer-director-star's triple-threat filmmaking potency.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The pingpong repetition of dialogue is more precious than poetic and heavy silences and actorly asides draw out a slim story that packs few dramatic surprises.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 1, 2000

Would easily qualify for an Oscar nomination if it were in a movie that was a bit less like canned theater and more cinematic.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Despite some pacing missteps, this well-acted and colorfully photographed film is a gripping, gritty look at a hard-knock Life.

| Jan 1, 2000

Strictly for die-hard Fishburne fans, and even they might be getting awfully fidgety by the end.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The film doesn't have a lot to offer that hasn't been done better -- and worse -- in hundreds of ghetto-sink shoot-em.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Without a coherent story to hold our attention, the mood of somber, lower-depths desperation soon becomes monotonous.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Despite numerous cutaways to juice things up, a movie that once moved becomes static and verbal in the stretch.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

A hit-and-miss effort.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Fishburne is able to create such an effective balance between humor and anxiety that the movie survives its familiarities of character and language.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Enough expertise has been lavished on this small film to make one almost forget that Once in the Life has been done more than once before.

| Jan 1, 2000

The script bogs itself down in reminiscing passages that steal Life's soul.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Never loses its identity as a work meant strictly for the stage.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 1, 2000

The good news is that Fishburne also stars, and has recruited a talented group of actors to flesh out the cast; the bad news is that no one seems to have been on hand to help out with the rest of film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Absorbing and edgy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000