"For me, this was the peak. I love Dangerous as well, but Bad feels more like a coherent body of work. You can feel the superstardom of the guy; he's at the top of the game. But still there is some weirdness: a song like "Speed Demon" is really weird. It came along with a whole film, Moonwalker. You get that the guy is now trying to recreate everything—defying gravity with "Smooth Criminal," and inventing shapeshifting ways of existing with the movie."

"Olivier’s best film as a director and maybe as an actor. With the help of excellent source material, he gives us a masterly criminal who narrates his villainy before executing it, trusting that his will, brains, oily charm, and relentless commitment will serve him, until it no longer does. Like Rupert Pupkin, he’d rather be king for a day than a shmuck for a lifetime. Every time I watch it, I think: “This time Anne will resist him.” She never does."

"The love story is so powerful, the spectacle so grand, that Marcel Carné’s masterpiece (an indispensable Criterion production) isn’t often regarded as a genre piece, though it is inhabited by every kind of criminal and involves an unforgettable murder in a Turkish bath—made particularly ghastly for occurring just off camera. Yet Marcel Herrand’s Lacenaire is one of the cinema’s most fascinating monsters, and his machinations resolve the fate of everyone else, including the muse incarnated by the great Arletty."