Shot in a cramped and stage-like style, and sounding like warmed- over Mamet, Swimming With Sharks tries to go for the big picture but comes up empty from the first frame to the last.

| Apr 18, 2022

The picture's raison d'être has to be Spacey's 'loud and nasty' performance: he's the sort of actor who grabs you by the throat and beats you about the head without ever lifting his feet from the desk.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 4, 2003

Mr. Spacey's Buddy is a caricature so dazzling that even Buddy might have to say something nice about it: cool, withering, studiously suave, and spurred by impulses that might seem peevish even in a 2-year-old child.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2003

This excessively talky, incoherently plotted, would-be film noir is not very good.

Full Review | Apr 12, 2002

To outsiders, all this rage and gnashing of teeth may seem silly and self-absorbed.

| Feb 13, 2001

A dazzling, frightening tour de force by Kevin Spacey.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The film has no subtlety, so the one-dimensional story comes across as a sophomoric, pointless tirade.

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

Sharks is a one-joke movie, and the joke wears thin less than halfway through.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

[Huang's] plot may be overwritten and the ending may be less than satisfying, but his eye and ear are right.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Kevin Spacey, who is the reason to see the picture, is hilariously ruthless as Buddy Ackerman.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

When it comes time to take this drama to another level, addressing the darker and more pertinent issue of why Guy puts up with it and what he wants out of life, Huang is right there.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

When Spacey goes ballistic, only to freeze the nitroglycerine in his veins a moment later, you don't want to look anywhere else.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 21, 1995