Drama is too intense for kids and young teens.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 28, 2010

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 22, 2005

The plot of Silver City is movieish in the extreme, with filthy abandoned mines subbing for the bars and alleys of urban noir, but it's no more than mild cheese.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2004

Though there's nothing wrong with moral outrage, it doesn't always aid the telling of a complex story. More subtlety might have worked better.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 30, 2004

Sayles has assembled a large, eclectic, talented cast.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 23, 2004

Sayles' prolix narrative, weighed down with subplots and characters and canvassing many social ills, dilutes the impact of a work that should nevertheless still make an impact on thoughtful viewers.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 22, 2004

Long, windy, diffuse in its message and blunt in its satire.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2004

The latest collection of op-ed pieces from writer/director John Sayles, whose movies are usually easier to respect than enjoy.

Full Review | Sep 20, 2004

Using Dickie Pilager as a stand-in for George W. Bush seems too coy a tactic for these scabrous times. For better or worse, we want the real -- or at least, the 'real' -- deal.

Full Review | Sep 19, 2004

There's definitely ore to be mined in Silver City, but Sayles' pan comes up with only particles of dust.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 19, 2004

An uninvolving muddle.

| Sep 17, 2004

The movie takes off into the comic stratosphere in its first sequence and then slowly sinks to Earth, made logy by its noble means and Sayles' increasing inability to shoot anything but fat clots of undramatic talk in the most boring manner imaginable.

| Sep 17, 2004

The movie's so crowded, the story becomes strangled, and the political message Sayles is clearly aiming for loses its bite. But it's worth seeing, if only for Cooper's performance.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 17, 2004

Wildly uneven.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 17, 2004

Silver City does seem more like the work of a nuanced novelist than of a dynamic visual and dramatic talent.

| Sep 17, 2004

A film that should involve us more than it does.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 17, 2004

Silver City has a detective plot, important themes, clever lines and a passel of intriguing characters, but they're not put together in a way that holds your interest.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 17, 2004

A terrible disappointment.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 17, 2004

If there's one thing Sayles has proved he's not gifted at over his long, respected career, it's comedy.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 17, 2004

[Sayles] shows how lives can be unexpectedly connected, how hidden agendas can slip in under the radar, how information can travel and wound or kill.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 17, 2004