The tangle of family, business, and crime, with its resulting loyalties and betrayals, is the volatile stuff of which the drama is made.

| Jun 28, 2021

An On the Waterfront wannabe, directed with a heavy portentousness that smothers the drama in a thick sauce of self-importance.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2008

I can't remember when a film so well-acted and so well-rendered visually was also so oppressive to sit through.

| Apr 27, 2007

A sensitive, intelligent and ambitious variation on the traditional going-straight story.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 25, 2003

Self-consciously elegiac, The Yards is a slow-burning but meticulously crafted family melodrama posing as a thriller.

| Dec 2, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 8, 2001

Gray avoids the more obvious gangster clichs, and the film brings some genuinely original flourishes to the genre.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 16, 2001

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

The film's intense realism has a transcendent quality that makes it feel -- dare I say it? -- almost Shakespearean in the depth and scope of its commentary on the human condition.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Better in execution than in content, and Gray will be a name to watch once his talents are allied to a better screenplay, for he is undoubtedly a gifted, distinctive visual artist.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

A serious film that strives for a moral complexity and a textural density rarely found in contemporary dramas.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

A great director's losing battle against a goofy script.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Gray balances the hugeness of the canvas and the occasional broadness of his strokes with spare, scrupulous detail in the individual characterizations.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

A slice of NYC made with imitation cheese.

| Original Score: C | Jan 1, 2000

It's that [moral] ambiguity that makes the film interesting.

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

A haunting experience.

| Jan 1, 2000

Beautifully cast and subtly shaded story.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The ingredients are here for a classy crime drama. They just don't blend that easily.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

It is so choked with its own solemnity that it barely musters the energy to tell a story.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000