Violent Screen

Baltimore Sun film critic Stephen Hunter is an unrivaled master of his craft. This extraordinary collection includes the best of Hunter’s movie reviews, taking aim at one hundred of the most important (or notorious) violent films released since 1982. With an incisive, machine-gun style of writing, Hunter pulls no punches when he bashes Blue Velvet, Tombstone, and Legends of the Fall. And he doesn’t hold back in his praise of The Wild Bunch, Goodfellas, and Reservoir Dogs.

Commenting on movies and society, Tarantino, Stone, and Peckinpah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, and Glenn Close, Hunter cuts right to the bone in exposing our flaws, fantasies, and flat-out love affair with blood and gore. His reviews are classics, and this collection is like a straight shot of pure adrenaline—an electrifying jolt of truth and insight no moviegoer can ignore.

“A virtual laundry list of sex and violence: film noir, outlaws, sexual obsession, horror, westerns, war, action-adventure, race and domestic violence . . . will delight cinaste and casual browser alike.”—Library JournalStephen Hunter is the author of 20 novels and the retired chief film critic for the Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. His novels include The Third Bullet; Sniper's Honor; I, Sniper; I, Ripper; and Point of Impact, which was adapted for film and TV as Shooter. Hunter lives in Baltimore, Maryland.