Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Praise for "A Few Good Men"

The Guardian
"Rob Lowe as the young lawyer also proves that he is as much at home on stage as on movie and TV screens. He has a lithe, square-jawed presence. He also shows the hero's incremental growth in moral stature as the action proceeds. Above all, he lends the character's neat-one liners the lightest of touches."

The Independent

"It all sounds familiar, formulaic, even forgettable, till you add the wit. Sorkin's is a brilliant, intelligent, cutting, shivering and even nasty script whose glorious wry humour only serves to heighten the threat. What makes its message strong is that all the ranks involved believe the monstrosities they are conniving at are for the best. As the Phantoms and helicopters irrupting deafeningly onto the stage remind us, men's lives may depend on it. Like several of his fellow Brat Pack actors, Lowe is a terrific stage performer. His timing is canny; he cuts through dialogue like a sharp knife with a fine line in crumpled self-deprecation. This is a play packed with memorable one-liners, and Lowe delivers most of them."

The Telegraph
"Rob Lowe, one of the stars of Sorkin's The West Wing, is excellent as the young looking, baseball-fixated rookie lawyer originally played by Cruise. Lowe memorably captures a witty, damaged character, and movingly shows this apparent lightweight learning moral courage under pressure."

Negative Review from Evening Standard:
"A Few Good Men has too few good scenes of dramatics, though Sorkin has a nice line in wry humour. The climactic courtroom tussling and taunting, the battle of nerves and words in which Lowe's Daniel tricks Jack Ellis's testy Colonel Jessep, misses the right wire sense of tension and danger.

Lowe, all cool, neat and slight, does not quite have the kind of charismatic stage personality that compels you to keep an eye on the selfconfident, thrusting lawyer.

Instead he interestingly makes the character more uncertain, more worried about legal victory than Cruise cared to."

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