Newsweek, January 20, 1996:
The film reminds us that the Bard was the Oliver Stone of his day, creating a portrait of Richard that scholars have disputed ever since. You have expect McKellen to look into the camera and say "Ages shall marvel at my devious ways/ And none but I be known as Tricky Dick." ...this film does more than rough justice to its source -- including McKellen's portrait of a man who tries to redeem his deformed body by deforming his soul. [Thanks to Bob Cox, Ashland, OR, for forwarding this review.]
Peter Birnie, Vancouver Sun, 19 January 1996:
The Bard would applaud such chutzpah in the telling of his Tudor myth. More than just intricate window-dressing, McKellen's vibrant bridge between the centuries is broad and deep enough to achieve a remarkable synthesis of film and theatre, artifice and harsh reality. The long-dead past and the ghosts of England's more recent battles meet to make Richard III one hell of a semi-fictional history lesson. [Thanks to Don MacLachlan, Director of Communications, Pacific Press, for sending along the review.]
Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 19, 1996:
...[A]fter a deftly managed and terse introduction to this chilling milieu, we are in the thrall of brilliant interpretation that bridges the centuries. Shakespeare's Olympian dissection of power, corruption and venality and his portrait of blistering villainy take on fresh meanings....McKellen musters the venom and hate of a man who is persuaded, quite correctly, that the world hates him.Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 1996:
Sympathy has never come easily for Richard, Duke of Gloucester...[still], your heart goes out ever so slightly to Ian McKellen's Richard when he cries "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"....A few stretches are pretty silly...but it's still great fund to watch a mostly wonderful cast...in settings that suggest some surreal convergence of Sir Oswald Mosley's blackshirts with the sumptuous decadence of Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist." ...Puffing on one cigarette after another, peering out at his intended victims through wire-rim specs, [McKellen] appears to be thinking about six different things at once, all of them spooky.
Stephen Holden, The New York Times, December 29, 1995:
Money, power, glamour, titled aristocrats, kinky sex, drugs and a smiling cobra for a villain: this "Richard III" offers action-adventure in "Masterpiece Theater" trappings. Its welcoming title character and sinister host, Mr. McKellen, plays a black-hearted Alastair Cooke daring us to join him in a party game of murder. Who could resist?
Jami Bernard, New York Daily News, December 29, 1995:
Diaboloical, bitter and cunning, this is a Richard who pauses for photo ops, watches home movies of his coronation...McKellen is so into the power and self-loathing of this "poisonous, sponge-backed [sic] toad" that you might not want to sit next to him Oscar night when he relishes the nomination.
Michael Medved, New York Post, December 29, 1995:
Why waste time with Oliver Stone's "Nixon" when Ian McKellen's "Richard III" can introduce you to the original Tricky Dick?...[T]hose who like their Shakespeare straight and respectful will despise this odd experiment, while those of more adventurous kidney should find it invigorating, original and electrifying--generally succeeding in its efforts to lend an aura of timelessness to its story....This may not be good Shakespeare, but it is a riveting and wildly original work of cinema.We are trying to assemble a file of U.S. reviews of the film for our parent Society's press officer. If you have a review you'd be willing to contribute, please contact Laura Blanchard, feedback@r3.org.
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