Andrew Sarris

“…. There was neither romance nor electricity with Garfield and Turner, whereas with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange there is genuine eroticism, though of a nonromantic kind. Lange, particularly, is a revelation as she suggests a '30s beauty like Frances Farmer unhobbled by censorship, or a softer Dorothy comingore unafflicted by Welles's misogyny in Citizen Kane. Rafelson is at his best, vis-a-vis his predecessors, with the sex scenes….

“Unfortunately, Rafelson, Mamet, Nicholson, Lange, and Company have made the sex so good that it overwhelms Cain's very skimpy melodramatic plot. Almost everything in this new production is utlimately stretched out of shape because of the tendency to allow the detail to overwhlem the design….”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice, March 25-31, 1981
[last part out of context?]