Synopsis
A misguided museum guard who loses his job and then tries to get it back at gunpoint is thrown into the fierce world of ratings-driven TV gone mad.
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Cast
- John TravoltaSam Baily
- Dustin HoffmanMax Brackett
- Mia KirshnerLaurie Callahan
- Alan AldaKevin Hollander
- Robert ProskyLou Potts
- Blythe DannerMrs. Banks
- William AthertonDohlen
- Ted LevineLemke
- Milton Davis Jr.The Kids
- Bill NunnCliff Williams
Recommendations
- 80
The New York Times
But Mr. Costa-Gavras, a galvanizing filmmaker working with a splendid cast, is able to tell this story in style. - 60
Salon
It has, at times, a loopy, edgy humor and moments of genuinely affecting pathos. But somehow the combination doesn't add up to anything. - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
Mad City might have been more fun if it had added that extra spin--if it had attacked the audience as well as the perpetrators. As it is, it's too predictable. - 50
ReelViews
The absence of originality and inspiration isn't Mad City's only problem -- it also suffers from a shocking lack of subtlety. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
Not for a minute is Mad City anything less than entertaining. Yet it becomes frustrating nonetheless. Its ideas gradually seem to be at cross-purposes -- not complex, not tantalizingly ambiguous, but tangled and undefined. - 50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
And veteran director Costa-Gavras, whose early work ("Z", "State Of Siege", "Missing") proves that he's no stranger to sociopolitical complexities, might well have been the man to make it. But not from this script -- it starts off as puerile and then regresses. - 40
Washington Post
It's a movie of great dynamism and energy, but very little discipline. It probes issues but it never really thinks about them. It seems smart, but it's dumb. - 40
Austin Chronicle
As delivered by the politically inclined international filmmaker Costa-Gavras ("Z," "The Music Box"), Mad City's oversimplification of the ethical issues is bound to annoy those with any first-hand knowledge of the news dissemination process and disappoint others who've come for the promise of a city whipped into a "mad as hell" frenzy.
