Eastwood and Michael Stevens. Reception Critical response The film received mostly negative reviews from critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Among the reviews, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, mildly complimented the stunts and special effects mentioning, "There are some good ones, including a chase down an expressway, with Eastwood driving his car right up the loading ramp of a semi auto-carrier" and noting that the film was "... jammed with material and the budget was obviously large, but somehow not much pays off. It's all there on the screen, but lifeless." On another negative front, Ebert also criticized Sheen's performance, saying he kept "a poker face and laconic voice through much of the movie, and doesn't generate the kind of vigor and intensity the role needs; a more nervous actor might have been a better choice." Ebert's partner Gene Siskel voiced his agreement; "It's a very depressing experience. Everyone's wasted in the film. The Latino stereotypes, when they get out on the street, are just awful." He went on to state, "... nobody has a good role. Raul Julia is wasted, Sônia Braga is tawdry. This was gonna be a classy international star, it's a joke." Hal Hinson of the Washington Post solidly concurred saying, "Eastwood runs his patented American macho numbers, plays the same limited repertoire of squints, but he's gotten way too long in the tooth to pull them off and the thrill is long gone." Incidentally, another Washington Post staff writer Desson Howe, dismissed the film as well. He openly wondered whether the film "will have something original about it. Maybe there's a twist somewhere, something to set it apart from the 20,595 other buddies-in-uniform movies made in recent years." In contrast with the buddy film genre though, Pat Collins of WWOR-TV, enthusiastically proclaimed the film to be "The best buddy cop movie of the year." The Variety staff however, added to the general dismay with the film saying, "Overlong, sadistic and stale even by the conventions of the buddy pic genre, Clint Eastwood's The Rookie is actually Dirty Harry 5 since Eastwood's tough-as-nails cop Nick Pulovski could just as easily be named Harry Callahan, ..." Vincent Canby of The New York Times, expressed his dissatisfaction with the film too. He mused, "The Rookie is an astonishingly empty movie to come from