Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Prismark10 Costa-Gavras's Mad City has too many familiar elements ranging from Dog Day Afternoon to Falling Down to Ace in the Hole but something has gone awry in the screenplay as its neither sharp nor with grim humour.John Travolta is Sam Baily a museum security guard that has been laid off sue to budget cuts. He is so embarrassed that he has not told his wife of his joblessness. Seething with anger he goes to the museum and holds his boss (Blythe Danner) and a class of visiting school children hostage at gunpoint which recklessly goes off and wounds his form workmate.Also trapped in the museum is Max Brackett (Dustin Hoffman) who sees and opportunity to take advantage by broadcasting on the sly live on the local news. When Sam catches him, Max exploits Sam's naivety to bolster his own flagging career by promising Sam to spin the news to make him popular and allow him to air his grievances to the media.Mad City shows how a minor incident spirals out of control and becomes a national incident. Before long the FBI takeover from the local police, the major networks come down hard on both Brackett and Bailey and no one is quiet in control as they thought they were.The film is proficiently directed by Costa-Gavras but I expected more rather than a reminder of previous films dealing with a similar subject matter that did it better.Mad City has star power but low wattage.

Adam Peters (18%) A very typical, tame Hollywood stab at a hostage situation drama with focus on the news media manipulation of real life and death situations. Quite honestly this is a poor movie. Dustin Hoffman is borderline terrible as he lazily mutters his way through the entire movie acting almost as bored as the poor unfortunate audience, as if I had paid money to see this then I'd feel more than a little cheated. While Travolta is far from on form, but at least he's as entertaining to watch as he usually is. The script is lame brained Hollywood trash that has an interesting and important concept of a man going above and beyond to try and get his job back, but it is so poorly developed that Travolta's character comes across more as an idiot than someone worthy of any sympathy. Couple that with the kidnapped kids having no real problem with armed men keeping them hostage away from their homes and family for days on end, and the final reel that has a terrible sense of pointlessness about it. My advice, give this 90's flop a miss.

Rodrigo Amaro A down with luck TV reporter (Dustin Hoffman) has the gold chance of his life when he finds the story of a lifetime while covering a hostage situation in a museum. John Travolta plays a fired security who held several kids and a museum director (Blythe Danner) as hostages simply because he wanted his job back. Max Brackett, the reporter, was there doing a small report about the place when everything started right on his front. Here stars the story of "Mad City" and some ponderations on the media role and the ones who watch it, which means, us!Wisely translated in Portuguese as "The Fourth Power" the film directed by Costa Gavras ("Missing", "Z") is satirical without being extremely funny or ridiculous; dramatical without becoming melodramatic; and controversial without being too shocking; criticizes but not that much, pointing its fingers on the media blaming it for being irresponsible and unethical, but where's the criticism towards audiences of this fourth power? Everybody (or almost everybody because every unanimity is dumb) loves sensationalistic journalism and its wide coverage of pointless subjects, sometimes very relevant news. People are very hunger for that and most of the time they don't even care if a sensational news story is true or false. And the media, in countries where it is the fourth power (behind the legislative, executive and judiciary) takes advantage of that, fooling people (but only the ones who want to be fooled or are too ignorant to have a better perspective). So in the film Brackett gets his lesson at the end, but what about the viewers? Most of them didn't get it all, that's why this film is bad criticized and barely heard. And how come a movie that attacks the whole media and press can be well judged or be a box-office hit? People are blind to these things. But when you have masterpieces like "Network" or "Ace in the Hole" this film pales a little in comparison.It might not have the same ferocity and originality as his works but it is a great work directed by Costa Gavras, with a great screenplay, nice music and fine acting by Hoffman (who now disowned the film in interviews calling of something I can post here referring to the word "City", yes, he does that with what he calls his bad films, go figure!), Travolta, Blythe Danner, Alan Alda, Ted Levine, Raymond J. Barry, William Atherton, Robert Prosky, Mia Kershner and Bill Nunn. I like this film a lot, it should have a larger audience to it, but it looks like it will be almost impossible to bring more attention to it, or a reevaluation by film buff's, critics and others. The cult status will take a while to be deserved by "Mad City". 10/10

MisterWhiplash Mad City is one of those movies you see in the theater, possibly when you were younger and can remember seeing rated R movies as something of a kind of big deal, and then re-watch it on TV almost as a way to relive the experience as much as enjoy the movie. Then, as one gets older, re-watching the movie isn't quite the same if it isn't, well, very good. And yet even as Mad City isn't something I'd say to a friend "watch this right away, it'll change your life" (that, of course, from Costa-Gravas, would be Z), it's definitely a good view for something on a lazy day or night, or for a minor Dustin Hoffman or (yes) John Travolta craving. It does happen from time to time.The two stars are in very fine shape here- as far as the script can let them be- as a clear-headed but desperate reporter and a security guard with a heap of bad trouble respectively, who are put into an unintentional hostage situation after Travolta's recently fired museum security guard accidentally shoots a fellow guard and has to hold up a bunch of kids who are in the museum (plus Hoffman, in the bathroom after a boring interview while this happens), and then it turns into a media blitz. When these two actors interact the way they do, or even go through their somewhat predictable motions, it works at the least because we get to see Hoffman and Travolta as characters they've worked out and almost perfected in their own way. We believe them in this situation, and that should be enough to make it at least compelling viewing....Except, unfortunately, for a preachy screenplay, which half the time is simplistic tabloid entertainment and the other half dogmatic about the nature of the media. Costa-Gravas tries for moments that go for the satirical (one of my favorite bits is when we see the shot security guard recovering in his hospital room, waking up the first time to see a giant camera crane rising outside of his window to get his reaction to seeing a giant camera crane from a news group). It's definitely 20 years too late: Network got their first, quicker, brighter, funnier, and even with some better action. Perhaps there would have been more possibilities if the movie had been made today, when cable news is even more saturated with BS filler, one analysis to the next taking up time from actual other news that could be reported.But, for complaints that can be had with Mad City, and there are more than a few, it's surely watchable Hollywood stuff, and this is thanks to the direction (I really liked the tension when Travolta is telling the kids the Indian ghost story in front of the display in the museum), and a nice roster of supporting/character actors. If you've never seen a Dustin Hoffman or John Travolta movie before, by all means look elsewhere. But if you got nothing better to do, it isn't bad.