76
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyReds is an extraordinary film, a big romantic adventure movie, the best since David Lean's ''Lawrence of Arabia,'' as well as a commercial movie with a rare sense of history.
- Not since Lawrence of Arabia has there been a serious historical movie of this sweep, complexity and intelligence.
- 100Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrWarren Beatty's shapely 1981 epic, based on the life of radical journalist John Reed, is a stunningly successful application of a novelistic aesthetic—a film that makes full and thoughtful use of its three-and-a-half-hour length to develop characters, ideas, and motifs with a depth seldom seen in movies.
- Warren Beatty's Reds is an extraordinary picture. Three hours and 19 minutes long, it is occasionally rambling and repetitious, but nearly always intelligent and engrossing.
- 91The A.V. ClubKenji FujishimaThe A.V. ClubKenji FujishimaIt’s a stylistic throwback as well: an old-fashioned, star-studded, big-budget historical epic with an intermission, filmed in a classical style that hearkens back in some ways to David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
- An engrossing, beautifully filmed and remarkably balanced portrait of a fascinating moment in history, cleverly enhanced by the intercutting of real-life documentary interviews. Reds is everything a historian could want in a movie.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAs for Beatty, Reds is his bravura turn. He got the idea, nurtured it for a decade, found the financing, wrote most of the script, produced, and directed and starred and still found enough artistic detachment to make his Reed into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero. I liked this movie. I felt a real fondness for it.
- 75Slant MagazineSlant MagazineReds is finally just an appealingly conventional epic movie-star romance with radical trimmings, but it contains several sharper elements that suggest the colorful period it seeks to recreate.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThe film's chief attribute, however, is also one of its major flaws. In presenting an up-close, personal look at the lives of its famous figures--particularly Reed and Bryant in their love affair and marriage--the film sometimes gives short shrift to the world-shaking events that are its unique subject. Nonetheless, the brilliantly designed and photographed REDS is a beautiful, passionate film, both in its stunningly recreated action scenes and its quietest moments.
- 50The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelThe subject - the romantic life of an American Communist - may be daring, but the moviemaking is extremely traditional, with Beatty playing a man who dies for an ideal. It's rather a sad movie, because it isn't really very good.