70
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertLight Sleeper isn't about the help he can get from psychics, however; it's about desperation that makes him project healing qualities upon anyone who is halfway sympathetic. The movie is familiar with its life of night and need. It finds the real human qualities in a person like the Susan Sarandon character - who, in a crisis, reacts with loyalty and quick thinking.
- 80EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanThis doesn't have the high style that made Taxi Driver or American Gigolo instant cultural icons - although Schrader shows more than a few traces of Scorsese as his camera creeps- perhaps because it's concerned with a chilly 90s that looks back with a sort of nostalgia on the cocaine-fuelled craziness of earlier years. But it does develop powerfully the themes of Schrader's earlier work and will not disappoint his fans.
- 75Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversSchrader is out there again, testing the limits of audience tolerance. Good for him. Buoyed by his questing spirit and Dafoe's mesmerizing performance, Light Sleeper might just keep you up nights.
- 75Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanSchrader seems to have found his way. In Light Sleeper, he attains a new, fluid emotionalism. The movie is a small but absorbing mood piece, a canny insider’s view of the life of a Manhattan drug dealer.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazinePaul Schrader's study of a middle-aged drug dealer, is a return to the director's thematic roots, an exploration of the dark side of the American psyche.
- The cast is skillfully alert and Schrader's vision is unencumbered either by sentiment or cynicism.
- 70Los Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonLos Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonLight Sleeper, with its cool, critical view of life on the edge, is no film to dismiss or ignore. It's a failure perhaps, but an honorable failure. If it isn't saved by grace, it has many saving graces.
- 70Paul Schrader has created a pointed companion piece to his earlier portraits of lonely outcasts (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo). Contemplative and violent by turns, this quasi-thriller about a long-time drug dealer leaving the business has a great deal to recommend it but could have been significantly better had Schrader done some fresh plotting and not relied on his standby gunplay to resolve issues.
- 60Time OutTime OutSchrader certainly has his finger on the pulse of the times, and the universally strong performances do ample justice to his sensitive ear for dialogue. But the story meanders, and it echoes Taxi Driver and American Gigolo so closely that Schrader is working less than fresh variations on over-familiar themes. For all the film's conspicuously adult intelligence, it elicits a disappointing sense of déjà vu.
- 40The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyAt its best, Light Sleeper is merely theoretical. Most of the time, though, it is artificial and laughably unbelievable. Even the dark, gritty Manhattan locations don't add authenticity.