Brian Orndorf Blu-ray.com Mar 23, 2025 B+

Benton shows some level of grit and surprise with "Bad Company," which is always interested in the impulsive ways of inexperienced men taking on an incredible challenge of self-preservation.

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Budd Wilkins Slant Magazine Aug 15, 2024

Robert Benton’s Bad Company is a downbeat revisionist western that deflates generic mythmaking while also saying a few choice things about its own day.

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Pauline Kael The New Yorker Sep 21, 2023

You can perceive the dazzle in the script, but what’s on the screen is pictorial and lifeless.

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Richard Schickel LIFE Jul 18, 2023

It's a hard movie to summarize and a hard movie to forget -- soft-spoken, hard-headed, stylistically singular. Bad Company is good company, the best I have found at the movies in a long time.

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Candice Russell Miami Herald Sep 22, 2021

Jeff Bridges' overweening pride in his position of power is the perfect foil to Barry Brown's quiet, well-mannered approach.

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Charles Champlin Los Angeles Times Sep 22, 2021

Despite some interesting ideas and some random achievements, "Bad Company" never really gets itself assembled.

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Joseph Gelmis Newsday Sep 22, 2021

One of the year's most entertaining movies.

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Stanley Eichelbaum San Francisco Examiner Sep 22, 2021

While the film has the merit of originality and contains some adroitly written moments of ironic tragicomedy, it fails ultimately, mostly because it's entirely too replete with commercial ingredients to command our respect, or even our involvement.

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Howell Raines Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sep 22, 2021

It's been far too long since we've had a Western as good and as authentic as "Bad Company."

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Susan Stark Detroit Free Press Sep 22, 2021

Robert Benton and David Newman, the writing team responsible for "Bonnie and Clyde," tell a simple story here in a simple, quietly convincing way.

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Perry Stewart Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com Sep 22, 2021

It's one of the most authentic westerns ever made, and that puts it in undisputably good company.

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Kathleen Carroll New York Daily News Sep 22, 2021 3/4

Benton excels In creating the appropriately gritty frontier atmosphere for his characters.

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Tom Hutchinson Radio Times Sep 22, 2021 4/5

As an evocation of the past, it's a remarkably successful venture for first-time director Robert Benton...

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Dick Lochte Los Angeles Free Press Jan 3, 2020

A pleasant enough film, but taken as a whole it has about as much cohesion as a Bob Hope monologue.

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Variety Staff Variety Mar 26, 2009

Bad Company is an excellent film which combines wry humor and gritty action with in-depth characterizations of two youths on the lam in the Civil War west.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Aug 5, 2008 B

The ironic comical Western prides itself in taking on the Horatio Alger myth.

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Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid Oct 6, 2007 3.5/4

[A] smart, character-driven Western that plays a little like the undercover cop genre.

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Tom Milne Time Out Jan 26, 2006

Benton's first film, a Western good enough to make everything he has done since seem disappointing by comparison.

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Jun 27, 2005 3/5

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