The Independent
21 June, 2002
By Anthony Quinn

I felt obscurely cheated by Killing Me Softly, having read advance reports that it was unquestionably the worst movie of the year. It's bad all right, and features a few collectors' items for the connoisseur: start with the performances of Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes, supposedly locked in a dangerous amour fou that involves "tasteful" kinky sex a la Damage and, er, fell-walking. Graham's one look – saucer-eyed perplexity – wears thin over an hour and half, while Fiennes looks less the brooding, enigmatic stranger than a vacant model in a mountainwear catalogue. He also has the silliest running style since Chariots of Fire – watch him chasing a mugger along the street and try not to laugh. Things aren't helped by Kara Lindstrom's script, adapted from the Nicci French novel, which is short on dramatic credibility and long on portentous howlers: "Sometimes I feel like I don't know you," says Graham after Fiennes has roped her to the kitchen table. Why Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) was hired to direct is a mystery, given that he'd never worked in the English language before (one might argue he still hasn't). Still, the movie didn't attain the level of epic awfulness I'd been promised: trash, but not a trash classic.

The Guardian
21 June, 2002
By Peter Bradshaw

Turkeys don't come plumper than this. It's a jaw-dropping catastrophe of a movie, a gruesome multiple pile-up of reputations. Executive producer Ivan Reitman may now wish to hire off-duty police officers to stand outside any cinema showing it, ushering milling crowds away from the auditorium: "Move along, move along, there's nothing to see, you vultures !"

The distinguished Chinese director Chen Kaige has been hired to direct a supposedly edgy, London-set Hitchcockian thriller, based on the novel by Nicci French. Sweet-natured blonde Alice (Heather Graham) has a passionate affair with handsome yet sinister stranger Adam (Joseph Fiennes), who is into - gulp! - extreme sex. Kaige has no feeling for the suspense genre, and clearly no sense of when his English-speaking stars are either being wooden or going way, way, way over the top.

Fiennes just does his Big Intense Face all the time: that silly, pseudo-sexy smirk that is turning him into the Roger Moore for the new millennium. It remains locked in position even when he is gallantly chasing down a mugger who has attacked Alice; he proceeds to give the villain a right battering, then proposes marriage to his dewy-eyed lover just as the coppers arrive - one of the most extraordinarily misjudged scenes I have ever witnessed.

The extreme sex turns out to be some very naff business with silk scarves out of the Alex Comfort manual. Graham looks like Bambi on betablockers and, incredibly, the script requires her to pose as a Guardian journalist, bafflingly wearing a studious, clunky pair of glasses. Why? As a Guardian-journalist disguise? I challenge the director to produce a picture byline showing any journalist on this newspaper wearing glasses like that.

BBC Online
18 June, 2002
By Neil Smith

It's not been a good year for Roberta Flack. No sooner has Hugh Grant butchered "Killing Me Softly" in About a Boy than the same song provides the title for this laughably awful romantic thriller. And flack is exactly what Chinese director Chen Kaige will receive for making this, his first English language feature.

Based on the novel by Nicci French (the nom de plume used by husband-and-wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French), Killing Me Softly tells of Alice (Graham), a young American in London whose life is changed forever when she meets dashing climber Adam Tallis (Fiennes). One moment their fingers are brushing as they both reach for the same pedestrian crossing button; the next they're ripping off each other's clothes for an afternoon of steamy rumpy-pumpy.

But once the pair are married Alice Tallis (doh!) realises she knows next to nothing about her new husband - apart from the fact he has a filthy temper and may be involved in the deaths of two ex-girlfriends. Add some anonymous notes, Adam's enigmatic sister (McElhone), and a mysteriously locked closet, and Alice starts to wonder if she'll be around to celebrate her first wedding anniversary.

With miscast leads, banal dialogue and an absurdly overblown climax, Killing Me Softly belongs firmly in the so-bad-it's-good camp. Fiennes is particularly lost here, though he does get to beat a tattooed thug to a pulp and torture a goldfish. A cult hit in the making.

BBC Big Screen Reviews BBC ceefax
21 June, 2002
By Jason Korsner

Bored by her safe relationship Alice (Graham) decides to run off with a mysterious mountaineer (Fiennes) she literally bumps into in the street. The intense relationship soon leads to marriage despite warnings about Adams past in a series of anonymous letters. By the time she manages to scratch the surface of her well respected husband its too late to change her mind.

What was Chen Kaige thinking? One of the most respected directors in the industry should be ashamed of himself. The nonsensical story and the am-dram script are every bit as laughable as the stereotypical performances. Only the cinematogrphy deserves any praise. Its not even so-bad-it's-good. The only enjoyment you'll get out of what is presumably meant to be a thriller is from laughing at its incoherance.

Telegraph Online
21 June, 2002
By Tim Robey

"So bad it's good" is a tag that gets bandied about a lot, but there's an elite minority of films to which it really does apply. To be added to the recent likes of Showgirls, Battlefield Earth and Autumn in New York is Killing Me Softly, a sublime masterpiece of miscalculation from the hitherto estimable Chinese director Chen Kaige.

Gasp with foreboding as Heather Graham brushes hands with smouldering stranger Joseph Fiennes on a crowded London street. Swoon with ardour as they go back to his flat and fling themselves all over it like rampant squirrels. Collapse with uncontrollable mirth as they get married, she begins to suspect that he might be a psychotic rapist, and various dead women from his past suddenly look incriminating. This Rebecca scenario has never received quite such deliriously overwrought handling. All credit to Chen for his staggering ignorance of trash cliché, and to his leads for keeping shtoom: this couldn't be funnier if it was actually played for laughs.

Prize-Winning Turkey
Empire Online
21 June, 2002

Only once in a blue moon does a movie come along that is so awful, so truly without redeeming qualities that it enters the elite category of films that are so bad they're must-sees. Ever since John Travolta's howler Battlefield Earth thudded into cinemas back in 2000, directors have been vying with each other to produce the next entrant into this particular hall of fame and with the release of Killing Me Softly, Chinese director Chen Kaige has succeeded where so many others have failed. Suspicions that this 'erotic thriller' starring Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham might be a turkey of epic proportions first surfaced back in spring when it was rumoured that the studios were contemplating going straight to video. Thankfully for cheese-loving cinemagoers the world over, someone somewhere at MGM decided to go for a theatrical release in Europe. Sir, we applaud you. With the sole exception of the Independent's film critic, who complained that, 'The movie didn't attain the level of epic awfulness I'd been promised,' UK reviewers have for once agreed together that Killing Me Softly is comfortably one of the worst films ever made. Empire's reviewer told you that 'you'd be mad to miss it.' Here are just some of the others:

Turkeys don't come plumper than this. It's a jaw-dropping catastrophe of a movie, a gruesome multiple pile-up of reputations.
Guardian

A hilarious dud.
The Evening Standard

With miscast leads, banal dialogue and an absurdly overblown climax, Killing Me Softly belongs firmly in the so-bad-it's-good camp.
BBC

This couldn't be funnier if it was actually played for laughs.
The Telegraph

This is tripe with lashings of gratuitous nudity.
The Times