Critics reviews

Deftly juggling grim moral urgency and comic self-flagellation, the director's rejoinder to Dostoyevsky gazes no less deeply into the darkest recesses of human nature. A fable about the need for fables, it remains one of the director's most humane works and perhaps his most chilling.

Featuring one of the finest casts Mr. Allen has ever assembled, "Crimes and Misdemeanors" has novelistic richness in delineating character — so much so that, at 104 minutes, the narrative feels squeezed. (I would have welcomed another half-hour.) The cinematic texture is unusually complex as well. Mr. Allen effects some startling juxtapositions, as when a hit man stalks his prey to a Schubert quartet.

For Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen devised a gimmicky but commanding two-for-one deal for his fans. Within one alternating bifurcated narrative, you get to see one of the director's stark, overtly symbolic morality dramas as well as one of his comparatively fizzier self-conscious romantic dramadies.

It's an extremely ambitious film, most akin perhaps to Hannah and her Sisters, the narrative and tonal coherence of which it sadly lacks, though the assured direction and typically fine ensemble acting manage partly to conceal the seams. Dramatically, the film seldom fulfils its promise, and its pessimistic 'moral' - that good and evil do not always meet with their just deserts - looks contrived and hollow. Intriguing and patchily effective, nevertheless.

The overall "philosophical" thrust—that good guys finish last and that crime does pay—is designed to make the audience feel very wise, but none of the characters or ideas is allowed to develop beyond its cardboard profile (though Alda has a ball with his part).