Overly familiar material, even well done, cannot be made more intrinsically interesting than it is. Not even by Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves.
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Were it not for these performances (Blanchett, Ribisi, Swank, Reeves), The Gift would be fairly negligible.
60
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
A creepily effective button-pusher that owes a bit to the original "Cape Fear" both in Sam Raimi's ruthless direction and Keanu Reeves's unexpectedly robust performance as the most violent redneck peckerwood in a steamy Georgia town.
50
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
Outside of a strong (and largely misused) cast and an abundance of moody atmosphere, there's precious little to recommend this exploitative mess.
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
A clumsy, heavy-handed and unnecessarily sordid occult thriller that somehow has managed to generate a big pre-release buzz.
40
TNT RoughCutAndy Klein
TNT RoughCutAndy Klein
In terms of cleverly hidden exposition, this ain't "The Sixth Sense."