The Bridges Of Madison County Critic Reviews

To say that Eastwood, who directed, has done a first-rate job of adaptation fails to do him justice. What he's brought off is closer to alchemy.Read the full review

It is easy to analyze the mechanism, but more difficult to explain why this film is so deeply moving.Read the full review

A beautiful film, not only in the way it was photographed, but for the manner through which the characters are revealed to us.Read the full review

Limited by the vapidity of this material while he trims its excesses with the requisite machete, Mr. Eastwood locates a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill.Read the full review

Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.Read the full review

The reason for the film's success is simple. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Eastwood skirt most of novelist Robert James Waller's excesses.Read the full review

Richard LaGravenese's flashback script craftily tones down Waller's wind, adds a germane subplot and strengthens the novella's framing device. [02 Jun 1995, Pg.01.D]Read the full review

While this adaptation of Waller's treacly bodice-ripper leaves out a lot of the lurid excess, it is not altogether free of pomposity.Read the full review

Even those who despised the original novel should not have trouble stomaching Bridges, while the novel's fans will find the film -- despite some additions -- generally true to what they perceive to be the book's spirit.Read the full review