Music Box (film) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a luke-warm two star review. Among his complaints were that the film was "not about guilt or innocence; it is a courtroom thriller, with all of the usual automatic devices like last-minute evidence and surprise witnesses" and that "Naziism is used only as a plot device, as a convenient way to make a man into a monster without having to spend much time convincing us of it." Foremost was his frustration that little attempt was made to understand Mike Laszlo, and that "the old man, who should be the central character if this movie took itself seriously, is only a pawn."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was even more critical of the film, doubting it existed for any purpose other than to get Jessica Lange an Oscar nomination, bluntly stating "real-life tragedy has been used to hype cheap melodrama. It's more than offensive; it's vile."

Caryn James of the New York Times applauded Jessica Lange's performance, but had to admit that "Ms. Lange comes as close to inventing a character out of thin air as any screen actor can. Nothing in Joe Eszterhas's overblown script or in Costa-Gavras's simplistic direction begins to support it. In the end, not even Ms. Lange's profuse energy and intelligence can redeem the film's unremitting shallowness and mediocrity." James ultimately felt that Music Box "finally tells us nothing about wronged innocence or monstrous evil."

All three reviewers commented on the plot similarities between Music Box and Betrayed, the 1988 collaboration between writer Joe Eszterhas and director Costa-Gavras, with the replacement of white supremacists with war criminals and the same predictable formula.