Critic Reviews

• Richard Brody, New Yorker

  Few films capture with such life-affirming wonder the despair, hatred, and incomprehension that drives the sexes together and apart.

• Vincent Canby, New York Times

  It is almost unbearably long. It is a narrative film without any real narrative, and although it is a movie about three characters, those characters are seen almost exclusively in terms of their limiting relationship.

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

  John Cassavetes' Husbands is disappointing in the way Antonioni's Zabriskie Point was. It shows an important director not merely failing, but not even understanding why.

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

  This 1970 film is John Cassavetes's most irritating, full of the male braggadocio and bluster that mar even some of his best work. But it's impossible to dismiss or shake off entirely.

• Philip French, Observer [UK]

  Highly uneven, painfully drawn-out, deeply sincere, wildly misogynistic and at times agonisingly tedious. It is also intermittently brilliant, with moments of piercing honesty.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  Cassavetes was a masterful anti-Hollywood director who probed human failings until he reached right under the skin.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  A brilliantly textured film to be savoured.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  Unyielding and underdeveloped, like a semi-interesting draft for something John Updike decided against writing.

• Matthew Thrift, Little White Lies

  Husbands may not be structurally perfect, but it's an unsentimental dissection of ego, fear and masculinity nonetheless.

• David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

  If Cassavetes' hipster cine-language has lost a little of its age and the innovative improv style won't be for everyone, the themes he tackles, riffed by a masterful group of actors, remain enthralling.

• Tom Dawson, Total Film

  A gruelling and sometimes exasperating film, notable for its raw performances - as well as its avoidance of close-ups and point-of-view shots.

• Hannah McGill, The List

  Veers from the ridiculous to the sublime with little shilly-shallying in between.

• Sean Axmaker, Turner Classic Movies Online

  ... a personal, provocative and uncompromising vision and a daring journey into the psyche of American men.

• Paul Brenner, Filmcritic.com

  Husbands is devoid of story but filled with a present-tense vitality and emotional honesty

• Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly

  Cassavetes' most dangerous and unfiltered expression of masculine anxiety -- a raw, deliberately off-putting masterpiece.

• James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

  as a time capsule rendition of men being boys, it certainly has an inherent intrigue, but it is not one of Cassavetes' strongest films

• Armond White, New York Press

  The history of American male aggression and insecurity comes filtered through Cassavetes, Falk and Gazzara's bravado. Better than authentic, they're fascinating.

• Michael Scheinfeld, TV Guide's Movie Guide

  Most of Cassavetes's cinema verite films as a director are invariably accused (and with some justification) of being rambling, self-indulgent, and unfocused, but it is precisely those elements that make his best work so affecting and memorable.

• Steve Crum, Dispatch-Tribune Newspapers

  Intense, moving Cassavetes classic.

• Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

  An overlong improv piece that when it's not tedious or startling settles on showing the emptiness of suburban life for three married New York commuters.

Read all 21 critic reviews