82
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasRemove all the crime-movie trappings—and there aren't that many, once Altman gets through with them—and the film would still endure for its surface alone, capturing the Depression-era South with brushstrokes of language, décor, and radio-plays on the soundtrack.
- 91Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment WeeklyAnchored by Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall’s romance and full of Altman’s typical aural flourishes (old-time radio shows serve as the soundtrack), Thieves Like Us proves that it takes both joy and melancholy to equal nostalgia.
- 90Time OutTime OutNever portentous, never a mere spoof, this is a touching, intelligent, and - in its own small way - rather wonderful movie.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertLike so much of his work, Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us has to be approached with a certain amount of imagination. Some movies are content to offer us escapist experiences and hope we’ll be satisfied. But you can’t sink back and simply absorb an Altman film; he’s as concerned with style as subject, and his preoccupation isn’t with story or character, but with how he’s showing us his tale.
- 80The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelRobert Altman finds a sure, soft tone in this movie, from 1974, and he never loses it. His account of Coca-Cola-swigging young lovers in the thirties is the most quietly poetic of his films; it’s sensuous right from the first pearly-green long shot, and it seems to achieve beauty without artifice.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)New York Magazine (Vulture)It is, perhaps, the most demanding of his recent films--but as always, the demands are justified and rewarding. [11 Feb 1974, p.74]
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA well-done remake of They Live By Night that's slightly long but unusually free of Altman's customary indulgences.
- 70The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyThieves Like Us is such an engaging, sharply observed account of a long-lost time, and of some of the people who briefly inhabited it, that I hope it doesn't get confused with other films that seem, superficially anyway, to have covered the same territory.
- 50Chicago ReaderChicago ReaderA cool, at times unbearably objective look at the fragile relationship between two rather ordinary young people in Depression America (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall), who happen to rob banks and get shot at a lot.