A Stranger Among Us isn't emotionally on a much higher level than a Harlequin romance, but Lumet keeps the actors in front of us, and we enjoy watching them.

| May 3, 2014

[Lumet] may be the quintessential New York director, but A Stranger Among Us argues that he should stay out of Brooklyn.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 3, 2014

Director Sidney Lumet is obviously fascinated by the Hasidic community, and he displays this fascination by presenting the Jewish characters and settings with affection and respect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 3, 2014

Although it's enjoyable as a bittersweet, fish-out-of-water love story, Sidney Lumet's A Stranger Among Us is less effective when it transforms itself into an exotic whodunit.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 3, 2014

A Stranger Among Us is eerily devoid of precisely the kind of urban detail and atmosphere that has always given Lumet`s work its authority, even when his storytelling falters.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 3, 2014

Griffith's artless embodiment of the script's deranged idea of tough-gal gumption isn't as amusing as it should be. She's a B-picture heroine stuck in an absurdly self-conscious prestige project.

Full Review | May 3, 2014

There's apparently something about Hasidic Jews that makes normally talented and reasonable filmmakers turn otherwise straightforward thrillers into harebrained hootfests.

| May 3, 2014

Like Griffith's character, the film falls in love with the traditionalist Hassids, choking on scene after scene of ethnic dancing and stuck-on beards, every interior bathed in a golden Hovis advert glow.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 3, 2014

It would be hard to think of a worse idea than casting Melanie Griffith, with her soft-as-down little-girl voice, as a jaded New York homicide cop.

| Original Score: C | Sep 7, 2011

Plot is overloaded with hard-to-take factors.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2008

All too obviously influenced by Witness, the film fails on all counts.

| Jun 24, 2006

The extremely farfetched solution to the murder mystery is not helped by a shrill, over-the-top performance from the perpetrator.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 27, 2002

Lumet's no-bull New York sensibility clashes repeatedly with Avrech's romance-novel mawkishness.

Full Review | May 12, 2001

Oy vey.

| Jan 1, 2000

Though this movie is indefensible in terms of virtually any critical standard I can call to mind, I wouldn't have wanted to miss a single second of it.

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

A preposterous cop movie that meets a romanticized portrait of the Hasidic community.

| Jan 1, 2000

If there has ever been a crime, in all the history of crime movies, that has a lamer solution than this one, I cannot remember it.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000