Kritiken

Little Odessa is solemn to the point of feeling occasionally oppressive, but it’s a remarkably assured debut from a director then in his mid-20s, with Gray’s visual style and keen sense for a subtle performance already apparent.

The best gangster film you’ve never heard of... [Little Odessa is] a deliberately paced character study that is only occasionally violent but consistently poignant.

[Little Odessa] has a thesis: hitmen must have psychopathy on their CVs; but even bad guys have souls. It's Roth's tough job to illustrate this, which, in his finest performance to date, he does magnificently.

It's a compelling story, one that's without any discernible humor or levity; indeed, its bleak prospects for hope and redemption may have you gasping for air before the end. First-time screenwriter and director Gray makes an impressive debut in Little Odessa. His precise compositions and the eerie stillness he evokes in many of the film's scenes, even during moments of violence, evidence the talent of a director who may be going places.

Of course, Gray never approaches Dostoyevsky's depth. Little Odessa is Crime and Punishment with 500 pages cut: all that's left is a skeletal plot. Joshua says, "I don't wanna talk anymore" before any real conversation about his crimes even begins. When the characters do speak, they tend to belabor the obvious: "I don't need a gun to be a man." "I know you can change." "I'm sorry I hit you, but you're always running away." (Irony!)

[Little Odessa] plays a little as if [Gray] put everything into it that he ever wanted to say, or do, in a movie... It seemed to me that the movie had raised too many serious issues to turn into a visual exercise at the end.

If atmosphere alone made a movie, “Little Odessa” would be first-rate. But Gray doesn’t really trust his own best gifts; he’s so young that he’s trying to work up as many different crosscurrents and plot contrivances as possible, hoping, perhaps, that something will stick and a reputation will be made. The film is a grab bag of melodramatic incident--a high-class resume movie.

An impressive if uneven first feature (1994), strong on atmospherics and weak on certain family links and ethnic details, by young New York writer-director James Gray... Up to a point, this is yet another crime picture; beyond that point are some style and feeling that make you remember it longer than most of the others.

Solid little film buoyed by strong performances... Remarkably (and admirably) restrained for a film about a hit man; this is the sort of low-key filmmaking that I almost always find absorbing, provided the script and the acting are up to snuff. Gray made terrific use of the infamous New York blizzard of 1993--his Brighton Beach looks like Siberia. Not as flashy a debut as those of Tarantino and Rodriguez, but quietly impressive in a way that suggests a potential first-rate director.

[Little Odessa] has an extraordinary sense of place and of drama, with its characters living completely in each emotionally fraught moment and facing it with remarkable restraint... An exceptionally good [film], the kind that suggests the start of a powerful career.

A highly charged, coolly assured directorial bow graced by riveting work from a trio of accomplished leads... [Little Odessa is a] somberly explosive family tragedy.