Stephen Schiff

“Hill has boasted of the special style he brought to this film; few scenes, he says, are more than 90 seconds long. Maybe that's why everything has such a compacted, freeze-dried feel. There's no porosity; [can't tell from my copy if this is semi-colon or colon] nothing sinks in. And that sort of atmosphere is murder on actors, because they need space and time to make their characters grow. It's terrible watching the fine New York stage performers in this movie slip and slide across Hill's icy surfaces. Glenn Close, a straight-forward, crisp-looking woman with a square jaw and an iron brow, is the most perfectly cast: as Jenny Fields, she has the right starchy integrity, and she makes everything she says sound epigrammatic; listening to her voice, you understand her rabble rousing charisma. And as Roberta Muldoon…, John Lithgow seems freer than anyone else in the picture….

Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, date ?