...Tequila Sunrise fares best in its deliberate yet involving first half...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 20, 2024

Most of the dialogue is sprightly -- it’s easy, everyday talk that actors can breathe to. But Towne’s directing is, surprisingly, better than his construction -- maybe because when he plans to direct he leaves things loose.

| Sep 13, 2023

The film is absolutely incomprehensible. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 7, 2022

Towne has acres of plot here, lashings of it, plot so complicated and so intricate that if you're not clenched to follow every second of it, you're lost. The sheer details of what he has created finally engulf Towne's handsome trio.

| Aug 12, 2020

Towne has a tremendous gift for creating dialogue that is concise, expressive and distinctive without advertising its own cleverness, and ''Tequila Sunrise'' is worth seeing just to be heard.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 12, 2020

Sexy and intelligent is an irresistible combination, and "Tequila Sunrise" is the sexiest, most intelligent Hollywood movie in a long time.

| Aug 12, 2020

Writer/director Robert Towne has done better work, as scriptwriter on classic movies such as Chinatown, for example, but this thriller is still an extremely entertaining illustration of his work.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2020

The best parts of Tequila Sunrise are so very good that you wish they could be in a more sustained movie.

| Aug 12, 2020

Witty, seductive and unpredictable, Tequila Sunrise is so arresting that it demands to be seen again even before it is over.

| Aug 12, 2020

There's not much kick in this cocktail, despite its mix of quality ingredients.

| Aug 12, 2020

Talky, brooding and leisurely paced, Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise is a pithy, curiously inviting cop-and-crook thriller with twists, turns and some fine acting.

| Aug 12, 2020

It turns out to resemble little more than a very sophisticated but slow and soggy episode of "Miami Vice" set in LA-LA land.

| Aug 12, 2020

Who says looks aren't everything? They are in this picture.

| Aug 12, 2020

There is nothing at all happening in Tequila Sunrise but a lot of vacuous drama about the loyalty between two high school buddies and the luminous beauty who must decide between them.

| Aug 23, 2016

Muddled thriller.

| Original Score: C+ | May 17, 2016

A project with the ingredients for greatness that nonetheless came out half-baked.

| Apr 6, 2009

The set-up has the precision of fine needlepoint, picking out the plot outline before embroidering it with a complex pattern of interwoven relationships.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 8, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 19, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2005