5/5 Excellent
  by Anthony J. Groen (De Soto, KS)
This movie is a bleak masterpiece. Johnny Depp plays a city man whose life falls apart in the American Northwest. The film is incredibly cinematic and devastatingly haunting. A must see.

4/5 Greil Marcus LOVED this shaggy dog story
  by Bob Fake Name (Divided States)
Well famous rock critic Greil Marcus loved the hell outta this Jim Jarmusch flick. Somebody asks what the Amazon reviewer who called "Dead Man" "disappointing" was smoking. I might want to ask the same of Greil Marcus who's lavish praise influenced me to buy this DVD. I mean it really is an interesting movie. I liked it a lot, but "the best movie of the dog days of the 20th century"?? Why? Best is sayin' a lot, but it is best of the dog days. Marcus gave ten reasons (*spoiler warning*):
1. Made in 1996, it might as well be a silent. You can read the whole film off its faces.
2. I can never keep track of how many people Johnny Depp shoots.
3. The running Cleveland joke, which makes the whole movie -- not to mention the hero's whole life -- into a shaggy dog story.
4. There is no hint in director Jim Jarmusch's previous work that he was interested in anything but irony, and this movie has no irony.
5. Lance Henriksen reprising his head-vampire role from "Near Dark" -- as a bounty-hunting cannibal.
6. The fact that you agree with him that the only way to shut up one of the other bounty hunters is to eat him.
7. The sense of an undiscovered West -- a West that vanished before it could be incorporated into national myth. That's all there on the train ride from Cleveland to the Pacific, some time after the Civil War, as the white passengers shift inexorably into barbarism.
8. Depp is an accountant named William Blake; as he heads into the accursed little Northwest town to work at what almost smells off the screen as a tannery, you realize you are now seeing the dark satanic mills, and that it's no big deal.
9. I'm not sure it's Robert Mitchum or the painting of his character that has a stronger screen presence, but it was his last role.
10. But you know, when it comes to sweeping the century off the table, Ildik Enyedi's film "My 20th Century" (1989) might be the one.
ANd then Marcus goes on to list 10 reasons why Neil Young's "Dead Man" soundtrack is the best music for the "dog days of the 20th Century.

I can dig it, to an extent. It's a cool movie worth seeing. There are some other movies at the end of the 20th Century that are just maybe as good.

3/5 Moody
  by Henry Alford (NY, NY)
I found this movie a little more mysterious than I think it intended to be. Johnny Depp is strangely flat, and some of the plot points went past me. But the black and white cinematography is never less than striking, particularly a scene of Depp and his Indian cohort riding pinto ponies through a forest of ferns.

5/5 Follow The Leader
  by steve (san antonio, tx)
Its a journey of innocence into guilt by association with the world that too often corrupts those who are often caught up in it. The machine of technological superiority that creates but often destroys manned by the cog players is at its most decisive when encountering challenges. Surreal realism and black and white effects with a wandering soundtrack like a minds thoughts create a truer feeling than most westerns and these characters are certainly more true to human nature than is often seen. Its depicts raw in your face similarities and differences between the european and indian cultural clash. Its also a story of reflection and forgiveness between two of different cultures who become friends in the end. Is this all some circular dream that this guy is having as a spirit or a soul? Is he ever really alive or dead? Its all hard to tell but that is what makes for much speculation and interest. Steve

2/5 Never been this disapointed in a movie
  by T. Z. Garton (San Antonio. TX USA)
With Johnny Depp and Bob Mitchum in the cast, it makes me wonder who owed whom a favor to get them on board this excersise in bad writing, poor directing and even poorer editing. Cinematography wise, nice job. Save your money unless you are a fan of bad attempts at making a bad art film.