Set in 1912, inside a dive bar named The Last Chance Saloon, its destitute patrons eagerly await the arrival of Hickey, who arrives annually and props everyone up with free drinks and spirited stories of his travels. However, when Hickey does show up this year, it is with a message of temperance and an exhortation to give up hopeless dreams and face reality.
We see a fairly dazzling array of performances, built by Frankenheimer cunningly and steadily.
– Michael Feingold,
Village Voice,
28 May 2008
fresh:
Eugene O'Neill's great, heavy, simplistic, mechanical, beautiful play has been given a straightforward, faithful production in handsome, dark-toned color.
– Pauline Kael,
New Yorker,
28 May 2008
fresh:
The play is an inescapably great experience, and that fact isn't muffled by this film.
– Nora Sayre,
New York Times,
9 May 2005
fresh:
For four hours we live in these two rooms and discover the secrets of these people, and at the end we have gone deeper, seen more, and will remember more, than with most of the other movies of our life.