Critic Reviews
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63
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USA Today Claudia Puig
This many-feathered animal occasionally soars before it crash-lands.
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63
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New York Post Lou Lumenick
In the skilled hands of Cusack - who recites quite a bit of Poe's poetry - and director John McTeigue ("V for Vendetta''), it's good pulpy fun.
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63
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ReelViews James Berardinelli
The Raven is period piece fun - at least until it realizes there has to be a conclusion. That's where a certain amount of inevitable disappointment sets in. The curse of the two-hour murder mystery is that the ending never seems to justify the build-up.
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60
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Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey
rRegrettably falls prey to its grand and grisly ambitions - it's neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.
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60
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Movieline Stephanie Zacharek
A handsome-looking thing, with fairly grand period costumes and reasonably lavish sets. So much for production values: In every other way the picture is stiff and unyielding, hampered by a clumsy plot and diorama performances. The whole thing has the feel of a second-rate living-history exhibit.
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50
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
When I heard that John Cusack had been cast for this film, it sounded like good news: I could imagine him as Poe, tortured and brilliant, lashing out at a cruel world. But that isn't the historical Poe the movie has in mind. It is a melodramatic Poe, calling for the gifts of Nicolas Cage.
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50
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Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Cusack captures that desperation vividly enough to make you wish this was the real Poe story, which The Raven onscreen leaves buried alive.
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50
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San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The story has its moments, and yet there is something about this tale of a serial killer's patterning his crimes on Poe's most gruesome works that doesn't completely satisfy.
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50
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Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The film, devising events that led up to his mysterious death in 1849, is also the most gruesomely literal-minded of period detective stories.
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50
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Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The Raven squanders a promising scenario while half-burying Cusack's mercurial skills as a leading man with the wiles of a character actor.
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20
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New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
This wannabe Sherlockian thriller is like a night spent at Madame Tussauds, watching mannequins strangle other mannequins.
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