Reception
Based on 14 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 43% of critics gave White Sands a positive review, with an average rating of 4.9/10.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the storyline was both predictable, and, when Lennox is revealed to be a CIA agent, utterly confusing. Most reviewers did feel that the film's highlights include work from cinematographer Peter Menzies and composer Patrick O'Hearn, but that neither man could make up for the problems with the script. As Desson Howe of the Washington Post wrote, it is never really explained why Dafoe's character has this obsession to find out the truth about Bob's death, or the various other unexplained oddities that occur in the film such as the fact that Mastrantonio falls in love with Dafoe's character for no apparent reason.
Leonard Maltin gives the film two stars and says it's "competently performed (even by Rourke) but with little else to distinguish it from dozens of its ilk”.
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