positives: strong memorable performance from steiger. interesting supporting characters, esp.from peters and oliver. grimy 60's nyc feel..... negatives: good ending not a great ending. favorite lines: 1. if you came here just to stare at me i would have sent you a photo. 2.you'll die, but not when ou want to. verdict: strongly recommended.

The pieces may not all come together perfectly, but it's an ambitious attempt at a character study and succeeds in allowing the audience to get into his head. Steiger's performance is a big part of this, but the editing may be even more important, with its disorienting flashes of memories.

Some movies can be seen as too obtrusive, too obvious in what they're trying to say; this movie felt like it was yelling in my face half the time. Like Rod Steiger, I just want some peace and quiet. Shut up the lot of you.....except Quincy Jones. He can stay.

A far more raw work from Lumet than I have seen, one which takes on the issues of the Holocaust within an ethnically diverse area of New York in a fascinating way. Its not perfect - it does get unnecessarily lurid as it goes on and, despite its ethnically diverse cast, verges dangerously into stereotypes, especially with Steiger despite the complexity of his character's issues of surviving the Holocaust - but its still an attempt at a tough issue in a fresh light.

I wasn't amazed. It definitely was one of the first to cover the effect of the holocaust on a survivor's life, but I found the film rather boring and slow. Steiger's performance was definitely the best thing about the film.

An intense study in pain and denial. Steiger's Nazerman can no longer feel anything but pain, and so he inflicts a thousand tiny pains on others, undervaluing their pawned items, and ignoring them as humans. But he can't put off the world forever, and when it rushes backs, it destroys him.

Score by Quincy Jones.

Steiger has been praised to high heaven for this performance, but I thought it was rather spotty. At first, it's a masterpiece of restraint. As the story unfolds and he begins to unravel, however, the hamminess creeps in. The other actors are barely worth mentioning, ranging from fair to terrible. And I thought the depiction of the concentration camps underplayed the horror far too much. Otherwise, it's pretty good. Lumet's direction is gritty and bold, especially in those rapid edit flashbacks.

Decent effort, but the character is a bit of a stereotype, and I don't feel as though enough substance was put into the story.

Seemed important at the time. Now it seems a little too heavy-handed and obvious.