[Fonda] makes all the right choices, from the mechanics of her walk and her voice inflection to the penetration of the girl's raging psyche. It is a rare performance.
– Jay Cocks,
TIME Magazine,
30 Aug 2009
fresh:
For once, a genuinely psychological thriller.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
fresh:
With Fonda and Sutherland, you have actors who understand and sympathize with their characters, and you have a vehicle worthy of that sort of intelligence. So the fact that the thriller stuff doesn't always work isn't so important.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Oct 2004
rotten:
Pakula, when he is not indulging in subjective camera, strives to give his film the look of structural geometry, but despite the sharp edges and dramatic spaces and cinema presence out of Citizen Kane, it all suggests a tepid, rather tasteless mush.