5/5 Death by Art Deco
  by Leah Cooper (San Francisco)
This movie is so gorgeous I could just EAT IT ALIVE. The plot could have been better, but the chemistry between Lamont and Margo is excellent, with dry wit and depth of character.

The music is great. The visuals... are beyond description.

I could watch it over and over and over again-- and I do.

5/5 GREAT MOVIE
  by Lorna Ecklund (seattle)
THIS IS A GREAT MOVIE,I WATCH IT OVER AND OVER AND SEE NEW TWISTS EVERY TIME! IT CAME TO ME IN EXCELLENT CONDITION IN A MINIMAL AMOUNT OF TIME.

5/5 The Shadow KNOWS....
  by Paul Polpiboon
Very few people realize that The Shadow was the very FIRST Superhero in all of American culture, as he had his own Comic Books long before Superman had ever worn tights. Which would make any film director pause and hesitate with intimidation in undertaking the grave responsibility of delivering this legacy onto film. Russel Mulchahy, the film director, summoned the courage to take on the task anyways and showed real honor by being 100% true to the exact lore of the dark hero. In the comic books, the Shadow was an ultimate force of deadly vindication and poetic justice, but he mysteriously creeped out in the night somehow knowing where the bad guys would show up and even when. This was an allusion to the psychic powers that he had which made him appear supernatural.

Even though the mysterious Shadow was literally death to all evil-doers he would always save the day and the stories would revolve around the spirit of adventure, intrigue, excitement, and esoteric secrets. In this film, it doesn't focus too much on that violence and had focused more on the spirit of adventure that the comics and novels always had yet still being grounded in the grim struggle of his dark roots and his nefarious villains. This film also focuses on the mental aspect of The Shadows characteristic, meaning The Shadow possessed paranormal abilities such as turning invisible, reading minds, and even hypnosis.

However, did The Shadow really turn invisible? Did he really hypnotize you? In truth, The Shadow was originally a radio character, who spawned into novels and finally comic books. What the character had centralized on was the faults of the human mind, where we THINK we are in control but we were actually blinded by our own fears. That 'control' was an illusion to the common mind and was easy to manipulate, as the common mind was weak. So it wasn't so much that The Shadow had meta-abilities where he could actually bend light to become invisible, he simply would stand where you would never look. Meaning he could be standing two inches RIGHT in front of you and because of you're own blindness you would never see him, very much in the same brilliance of the Clark Kent idea. The Shadows motto in the film was "The clouded mind sees nothing". All your weaknesses, all your blindness, and even arrogance, the Shadow KNEW. In fact, the Shadow knew the human animal so well that he could manipulate two parties against each other and they simply never knew that he was pulling their strings in the background. As a master strategist he was similar to the ability of Hitler where the Shadow could manipulate the entire masses with propaganda and even had his own network of people working for him, who were secretly planted all across the globe, a network controlled by one man.

One of the original creators of The Shadow character, Walter B. Gibson, was actually a Mentalist and had traveled in the circles of magicians and their trade. In showbiz magic, things appear impossible but the magician knows how to distract your mind and he knows how the observer thinks. Mentalist, on the other hand, seem able to predict your next move (pick a card, any card) and was fully aware of the assumptions you would automatically make. For these esoteric trades the knowledge of human errors is what spawned The Shadow character by The Shadows creators. In the end of this film there is even a mirror maze, as mirrors are the often use for tricks of light. This was not to say that the Shadow never had any powers, but rather that to access them you would have to go deep in your mind, the 90% of the brain that science declares has been neglected. The Shadow had a deep understanding of his enemies, and of just the human race in general, because he had a deep understanding of himself, and from that self-understanding he could access mental abilities that are supposedly originally natural. On the radio show, this discipline that he learned was constantly alluded to the far East, the land of the orient.

Though they never fully declared it on the radio show, it was still apparent that The Shadow had his esoteric secrets rooting from China and all of it's ancient splendor, including the alleged Shangrila. In this film they fully take that fact and reveal it in a grand exotic way which shows who and where the Shadow came from. Having that in the film was a testimony to the amount of knowledge that the film makers had on the subject and a testimony to their diligent research. Also, for the radio show and the comic books, at the end of the stories The Shadow would speak his classic unforgettable lines "Crime Doesn't pay....The Shadow KNOWS". Which was a very odd thing for him to say; why WOULD he know that crime doesn't pay? The way it had always been said was as is if he had already been there, that he himself was actually once a criminal. "The Shadow KNOWS" was his trademark line as it always meant that he always knew what you were up to, that you could never hide anything from him, "who knows what evil lurks in hearts of men?" was a classic Shadow motto. As much as we could lie; the Shadow KNEW, he always knew. But at the end of the tales it had a totally different tone, where he warned the viewer as if to say that crime is not worth it, "trust me, I KNOW".

Taking this into account the filmmakers realized that The Shadow was so vicious and always knew the "evil that lurked in the hearts of men", BECAUSE he must have been a criminal once before himself. In fact, because he became the ultimate crime-stopper then if he was a former criminal then he must have been the Ultimate Criminal. A criminal of legend and even worthy of Genghis Kahn, Adolf Hitler, and Ivan the Terrible; conquers and despots. In the film they reveal he was a brilliant criminal mastermind but for some reason never went forward to unleash himself fully to the world, strangely holding back and was comfortable staying in his little rule. This conscious in him was locally sensed by a master mentalist/magician, a guru monk who saw his holding back as a sign of hope. The guru who holds great mastery and power becomes the guiding force that transforms one of the most potential great evil-doers into evil's deadliest enemy; as evil knows evil. The Shadow had always appeared like a bad guy fighting for the good guys and the reason he appeared as a "bad guy" was because he WAS a bad guy.

The film takes this extra step very brilliantly, which was a natural step, to add to The Shadows lore. Without forgetting a single beat, the film of course ensures The Shadows most loudest trait; his haunting Laughter. On the radio show his eerie laughter would immediately capture the listeners attention. The criminals in the story could not see him because "the clouded mind sees nothing" but as his laughter echoed all around them they would be in fear for their lives. His sinister laughter was constructed in 3 folds. One was that he knew his prey so well, as he was one of them and also that he knew the human mind so well, he could not help laugh at the foolishness of his preys self denial and false hope. The second fold was a psychological tactic, where his prey would have his guilt stimulated when the invisible laughing man was a memorandum that there is no hiding from truth and his vengeance. The third and final fold was basically having the laughter symbolize that he was far "badder" than the bad guys themselves. The Shadow had haunted the entire underworld.

Almost a decade later other superheroes had started to show up in comic books as well with one particular offspring, known as the Batman. The Batman character was exactly parallel to The Shadow character in a multitude of aspects to long to count in this article. Bill Finger, the co-creator of Batman, admitted that one of the Shadows popular stories was stolen and used for the first Batman comic book. In a fair turn, this film takes a comic scene from the meeting between Batman and the villain Ras Al Ghul and uses it for the scene of the meeting between The Shadow and his formidable villain.

Before Arnold Schwarzenegger was killing bad guys, and before Clint Eastwood was doing the same, and even before Bruce Lee movies with the no nonsense justice smiting the dastardly villain, The Shadow was the very first and original Avenger. To take on such a heavy responsibilyt to transfer upon film was a task successfully and bravely done by the consummate actors and Russel Mulcahy, the films director. This film accomplished the Shadow in almost every way possible, even though violence was not a focus, and is family-friendly enough so that all viewers of any age can see it, exactly like how the radio show was available for all families in the United States of America.

4/5 a kind of movie
  by Bancolombia Clasica (colombia , south america)
bored of the same old grind ? check this and realize what a entertaiment is...

5/5 The best!
  by Christine L. Tuohy (Reno, NV United States)
This is by far the best adaptation of a comic book / radio show out there. Forget Spiderman, X-men, and Batman. The Shadow is a stylized, classy, fun movie all around with witty dialog, wonderful effects, and an amazing look to it. Russell Mulcahy has outdone himself with this one. I loved the look of the music videos he directed in the 80's for Duran Duran. (look at his profile on Wikipedia - he did more music videos than I ever realized) This movie is a wonderful addition to his resume.
The Shadow has great visuals, a fantastic score by Jerry Goldsmith, fabulous costumes, and the city has a perfect "Gotham" feel to it. The dialog has many wonderful humorous points to it, and it's one of the few movies where the hero and villian will sit down together to have a polite conversation about exactly how they're going to kill one another, and they do it with the utmost of class.
It's a big budget movie that somehow flopped at the box office, but is nevertheless worth a look!