Contemporary Literary Criticism | Crichton, Michael (Vol. 90) - David Denby (review date 16 November 1981)

David Denby (review date 16 November 1981)

SOURCE: "The Wizards of ID," in New York Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 45, November 16, 1981, p. 118.

[In the following excerpt, Denby unfavorably reviews Looker.]

Will Michael Crichton ever make a really good movie? Crichton, the author of The Andromeda Strain and other scientific-medical thrillers and the director of Westworld, Coma, and The Great Train Robbery, is a clever fellow with a talent for conventional suspense and a fondness for slightly bizarre stories about technology run amok. The Great Train Robbery, his most assured work as a director, was overpadded and smug, but at least it had some big-movie sweep and detail, and its Victorian setting took Crichton away from his machinery fetish—the computer screens and dials, the research-lab corridors. But now, in Looker, Crichton is back in the corridor: Half the movie consists of people stalking up and down...

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