51
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Chicago ReaderPat GrahamChicago ReaderPat GrahamThe character interactions are strong, especially for this depleted genre, and Hill's tight, efficient styling recovers a lot of lost formal ground: his framing and crosscutting are as sharp as ever, and the bloodbath finale is, improbably, a model of intelligent restraint, the classicist's answer to Peckinpah baroque.
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertHill doesn't really try to avoid the cliches in a story like this. He simply turns up the juice. Like his "Southern Comfort," "48 Hrs.," and "The Warriors," this is a movie that depends on style, not surprises. He doesn't want to make a different kind of movie; he wants to make a familiar story look better than we've seen it look recently. And yet there is a big surprise in Extreme Prejudice in the appearance and character of Nick Nolte.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA fierce and often compelling actor, Nick Nolte usually creates a riveting character, and when that character is coupled with a good film, the end product is something worthy of watching. Such is the case with EXTREME PREJUDICE, despite its abundance of violence.
- 75Chicago TribuneDave KehrChicago TribuneDave KehrThe film leaves a sense of entrapment and despair. Its characters are caught in a shrinking world that leaves no room for notions as grand as "good" and "evil," but only a sordid, creeping malignancy that levels everything in its path. [24 Apr 1987, p.AC]
- 70Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasWalter Hill's Extreme Prejudice is as red-hot as a Saturday-night special, an ultra-violent action-adventure fantasy so macho that it verges on parody--on purpose. Sensational rather than serious, it is an exploitation picture but one with class: it has style, a point to make that happens to be highly topical and, thankfully, a dry, saving sense of humor.
- 60The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinIt has a bold, bright look and a crisp tempo, propelling the action from one shootout to another until it finally reaches the most violent of its crescendos. By the time it has arrived at this last stage, the film is so close to being ludicrous that it's hard to know whether it is deteriorating or ascending.
- 50Time OutTime OutThe action is lean and tough, the body count huge, and the final shootout an obvious reprise of Peckinpah's finale. But where the latter's vision transformed The Wild Bunch into a savage elegy for the passing of the Old West, Hill can only duplicate its choreographed violence.
- 30Washington PostRichard HarringtonWashington PostRichard HarringtonBut on the evidence of this twisted, high-tech "Wild Bunch" update, [Hill]'s still just the poor man's Sam Peckinpah. All the ethics and issues have been eliminated from Hill's nuevo western film, leaving only the violence, the spent bullets and the copious slo-mo flow of blood.