The film is a mass of inoperative whimsies and conceits; they're imperative even on the dumbest sci-fi level, because Boorman isn't enough of a writer to make them work together.

| Sep 21, 2023

[Zardoz] demonstrates how one can make a cheap sci-fi flick look like a cheap sci-fi flick by using mirrors and prisms as substitutes for imagination.

| Oct 2, 2019

You have to hand it to John Boorman. When he's brilliant, he's brilliant (Point Blank, Deliverance) but when he's terrible, he's really terrible.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 27, 2019

Probably John Boorman's most underrated film-an impossibly ambitious and pretentious but also highly inventive, provocative, and visually striking SF adventure.

| Mar 27, 2019

Such a wildly ambitious misfire that you can't help but root for it, or at least feel some twisted sense of affection for it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 2, 2018

Zardoz is a futuristic, metaphysical and anthropological drama testing John Boorman in three creative areas. The results: direction, good; script, a brilliant premise which unfortunately washes out in climactic sound and fury; and production, outstanding.

| Feb 20, 2009

The script gradually falls apart into a mess of philosophical pottage under the whimsically pretentious Tolkien influence. But visually the film remains a sparkling display of fireworks, brilliantly shot and directed.

| Feb 9, 2006

As an exercise in futuristic abstractions, Zardoz... is science-fiction that rarely succeeds in fulfilling its ambitious promises.

| May 9, 2005

Boorman puts a lot of heavy concepts into Zardoz, but seems uncertain whether he takes them seriously himself.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 3, 2004