Synopsis
A Jewish homicide detective investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result.
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Cast
- Joe MantegnaBobby Gold
- William H. MacyTim Sullivan
- Vincent GuastaferroLt. Senna
- J.J. JohnstonJilly Curran
- Jack WallaceFrank
- Lionel Mark SmithCharlie Olcott
- Rebecca PidgeonMiss Klein
- Ving RhamesRobert Randolph
- Ricky JayAaron
- Paul ButlerCommissioner Walker
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie crackles with energy and life, and with throwaway slang dialogue by Mamet, who takes realistic speech patterns and simplifies them into a kind of hammer-and-nail poetry. - 100
Rolling Stone
Purposely out of step with the feel-good-movie era, he offers caustic wit instead of gags, blunt questions instead of glib answers and challenges instead of reassurances. Bless him. - 100
The A.V. Club
Television tends to trump movies when it comes to staging richly detailed cop dramas, but David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide is the rare big-screen policier that can stand up to The Shield, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and Homicide: Life On The Street. - 100
Washington Post
David Mamet's Homicide is a brilliant muddle: compelling, exhilarating and, at the same time, profoundly dubious. Certainly there is greatness in it. And just as certainly the moral ice it skates on is precariously thin. It leads us into a forest of dark contradictions, then leaves us stranded, dazzled but bewildered, elated but perplexed. - 88
Slant Magazine
The Pulitzer-winning playwright’s movies are often a few steps ahead of their audiences, but Homicide seems to have intuitively anticipated its now-exemplary status. - 80
Variety
Mamet’s direction gives much of the film a bracing, refreshing tone as he works to express the shattering tensions of Gold’s work. - 80
Empire
As a psychological drama, it's a sophisticated, gripping piece that unusually leaves you wanting to go on past its unsettling conclusion. - 78
Austin Chronicle
Homicide may not be Mamet's most accessible film, but it combines those elements of the playwright/director's work -- theatricality, stylization, rough poeticism -- that might be most off-putting to the typical movie audience with enough tension and mystery to keep them in their seats.
