Hard Candy Critic Reviews

Hard Candy is the rare movie that may be worthiest for the arguments you'll have after it's over.Read the full review

Hard Candy is impressive and effective. As for what else it may be, each audience member will have to decide.Read the full review

Hard Candy is extreme - a battle of the sexes that glides from tricky to angry to shockingly ugly.Read the full review

Maddeningly exploitative, the film takes a provocative subject -- pedophilia -- and wraps it in a sterile, vacuum-sealed package, devoid of meaning.Read the full review

These are two fascinating characters, and watching them thrust and parry proves to be as impossible to turn away from as observing a grotesque roadside accident.Read the full review

With Hard Candy, the innocent are tortured along with the guilty -- the innocent, in this case, being the audience.Read the full review

To pull this kind of thing off you need exceptional performances, and the two leads rise commandingly to the challenge. Wilson, best known for his work in the screen version of "The Phantom of the Opera" and HBO's "Angels in America," keeps his true colors effectively muted throughout the bulk of their face-off, but it is Page who astonishes.Read the full review

During the ensuing narrative unpleasantness and visual incoherence (meaningless choker close-ups, pointless slow motion), Hayley subjects Jeff to a range of torture, all in the name of, well, what? Despite the two fine performances, it's hard to say.Read the full review

Had they ended 20 minutes in, "Wedding Crashers" would qualify as a gut-busting triumph, and Hard Candy would be a miniature masterpiece.Read the full review