Metacritic reviews

Delivers the entertaining goods without fuss or frills.

Hackman is, as ever, a master performer, an actor at the peak of his powers. However, he can't carry the whole movie.

The films portray the Klan as criminal, racist and anonymous, but those have always been its selling points; it is not portrayed as boring and stupid.

Mechanical and artificial, and tells you what to think.

Timing does no favors for The Chamber, the John Grisham death row drama that arrives on the heels of a better death row film (''Dead Man Walking'') and a better Grisham adaptation (''A Time to Kill''). But this film's also-ran aspects are partly offset by Gene Hackman's superlative performance.

Even more sad is an embarrassingly shrill performance by Faye Dunaway, and an ending which insults the ability of the audience to watch a movie without having a conclusion spoon-fed to them.

An adequate, inoffensive thriller that, every so often, shows itself to be a little smarter than it needs to be… even if it isn't often enough to make this thriller anything more than average.

The Chamber is like a balloon that all the air has leaked out of. Maybe it wasn't magnificent before, but in its current state it is sad indeed.

Material so bereft of plot and insight that all it can provide is actorly turns with no cogent means for tying them together.

The Chamber has nowhere to go and it goes there slowly, flirting in all directions.