The characterizations and details are occasionally startling; the extent of her husband’s vicious mistreatment and relentless disregard for her safety – and its significant effects on her mental wellbeing – are thoroughly monstrous.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 6, 2025

What's Love Got to Do With It is a classic and should be used as the blueprint for this sort of sweeping biopic: superb acting, a strong script, excellent production value, and access to the artist's material.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 29, 2023

What's Love Got To Do With It may not be quite in the class of George Cukor but it's a lot better, for instance, than Mark Rydell's picking of the bones of Janis Joplin in The Rose.

| May 12, 2021

A major high spot and a pivotal point in the couple's troubled relationship comes when Phil Spector intrudes to produce 'River Deep, Mountain High'. The power of the song embodies the drama.

| May 12, 2021

This riveting rock biopic remains a cut above...

| May 10, 2021

The two leads turn in powerful performances.

| Apr 21, 2021

As an actor's showcase, the film is a dream.

| Apr 21, 2021

Bassett ignites into a major star, a dazzling supernova, with her bravura acting and dancing as Tina Turner, a submissive wife who finally fights.

| Jun 6, 2018

Complete with the rock star wigs, superhero body and slightly timid but ever so deliberate snarl in her speech, Bassett embodied the icon during her slow and steady rise to fame, and her tumultuous marriage...

| Sep 8, 2017

What`s Love Got to Do With It is sizzling film fare.

| Jul 29, 2013

A powerful portrait of emotional endurance, propelled by the outstanding performances of Bassett and Fishburne, both of whom lend a crucial dimension to the gradual redundancies of Kate Lanier's otherwise insightful screenplay.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 29, 2013

Their nuanced performances give a spectrum of emotional shadings to a black-and-white script that casts Tina as the Beauty to Ike's unreconstructed Beast.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 29, 2013

[Fishburne's] performance is the one X factor in What's Love Got To Do With It, which in most respects is an entertaining if conventional pop star biography.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 29, 2013

Angela Bassett is a wonderfully sympathetic screen presence who may have a big career ahead of her.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 29, 2013

Fishburne's astonishing portrayal of Ike is what holds the movie together. The actor builds, in precise increments, a devastating portrait of a macho control freak; he even finds a kind of ghastly humor in the character's madness.

| Jul 29, 2013

Though the picture rightfully belongs to Bassett, a final word must be said about Fishburne, who never fails to make Ike seem human if not defensible. Even in defeat, he is remarkably compelling.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 29, 2013

Agreeably camped-up biopic, ringing with righteous sentimentality and brassy defiance, with a furiously good central performance from Bassett.

| Jul 29, 2013

Basset genuinely holds your sympathy as the little country girl Anna Mae Bullock, singing and suffering her way to superstardom and personal liberation, [and] Fishburne is sensational.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 29, 2013

Angela Bassett gives a superbly versatile performance as the heroine, and Laurence Fishburne's portrayal of Ike Turner consolidates his status as one of the most expressive and intelligent actors in movies today.

| Jul 29, 2013

Brian Gibson, who directed the script by Kate Lanier, seems to have trouble taking charge of his material as he skips through the years.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 29, 2013