Dark Streets (2008 film)

Set in a visually dazzling fantasy of 1930s New York, Dark Streets tells the story of Chaz Davenport, a dashing playboy who owns what promises to become the hottest new nightclub in town if only the lights would stay on.

[4] Entertainment Weekly writer Clark Collis gave the film a C+ grade, praising the "vibrantly choreographed, extravagantly costumed song-and-dance numbers" but was critical of the "flimsy plot" being a predictable whodunit.

"[6] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter gave Samuels credit for adding an "impressive stylistic sheen" to an "obviously limited budget" production but criticized King's "convoluted and often laughably over-the-top screenplay", concluding that: "Streets is too derivative and lacking in wit to compensate for its narrative deficiencies, wooden performances and overall pretentiousness.

Club's Scott Tobias and The Oregonian's Heidi Williams both gave it an overall C− grade, with the former saying "the film so lavishly fetishizes the period's glittering costumes and leggy chanteuses that it can barely work up the interest to tend to its junior-league Chinatown plotting" and the latter commending Samuels and her production team for taking "a cool-looking, low-budget attempt at making an impressionistic film-noir blues musical", but felt that same attention to aesthetic took away any appeal from Mann's portrayal of Chaz and revealed a script that's more like "a simple-minded bummer" filled with "hollow mannequins" delivering "stunningly empty dialogue.

"[10] Nick Schager of Slant Magazine panned it for being "a thing of visual and narrative smudginess, its belligerently expressionistic, lush cinematography typified by awful fuzziness around the frame's edges, and its story an undercooked murder-mystery composed of half-scenes and conversational fragments.