Beautiful, moving film.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

"The Mean Season" consists of showing how a psychotic tries to promote himself with his crimes by getting the attention of a journalist (Kurt Russell) who also sees a way of not only promote his writing talents and be famous but also his detective skills while trying to get this guy before he kills more victims.This is like "Zodiac" before "Zodiac" (the film) but a little after the facts of the real Zodiac killer, so there isn't much good this film can do now but back in the 1980's people, I guess, were easily impressed with this thing. It never gets scary and informative like Fincher's film, and it never gets bloody like any other flick on the same issue. Talk talk talk, that's all these characters know what to do and their talks aren't so well written to make you involved with this. And the film goes for too long in its 90 minutes or so, don't know how they did it. And there's a supermassive wave of plot holes, dumb moments, no excitement in the rare action sequences presented and more talk.The villain played by the late Richard Jordan makes this movie worth seeing, he's incredibly good. But a film rarely is sustained with only performance. The supporting cast is good but they're not at their best but it's very nice to see Richard Bradford playing one of the good guys for once. Mr. Kurt Russell has plenty of good stuff made in that decade such as "The Thing" (coincidentally he and Richard Masur act along here as well), "Big Trouble in Little China", "Overboard", "Tango & Cash" and "Escape from New York". "The Mean Season" is not one of them but it's not his fault that the script was weak. It's very visible that there's zero chemistry between he and Mariel Hemingway, even though the guy tries hard and achieves some success, the girl is just bad, bad, bad. Without question, one of the most clichéd and boring films I've ever seen. A generic picture specially made for less demanding viewers who get easily satisfied with junk. 4/10

Passable murder thriller that won't set the world alight, but it's the charismatic Kurt Russell who carries you throughout along with a well-oiled support cast (Richard Masur, Richard Jordan (a very uneasy performance as the killer), Andy Garcia, William Smith and Joe Pantoliano). Like everyone has already mentioned, Mariel Hemingway is one of the unconvincing factors and her performance did really grate away --- not helping was the character she was portraying too. What starts as off as provocatively stimulating (where the killer contacts Russell's newspaper reporter character to offer him the chance to become his link to the media -- informing him about the murders before anyone else knows about it) only goes on to be your normal, predictable run of the mill psycho thriller where revenge threats (for stealing the limelight away) and kidnapping becomes the focal point. Early on the phone calls between the reporter and the killer, drills out some suspense and it opens up the ambitious nature of the media and at what cost you would go to cement a story with the close ties that are formed. This is seen to be a big breakthrough for Russell's burnt-out character, until it starts to affect everything around him namely that with his fiancée (Hemingway) and instead of reporting it he eventually becomes the news. Set during the middle of Miami's storm-riddled summer, it's engulfed by a humid atmosphere and music scorer Lalo Schfrin cooks up one excellently saucy and characteristically unhinged score that blends right in. The standard material is given a lot more punch due to Schfrin's input.

I fully agree with 'Cabbleaddict' all right... Maybe not QUITE as bad as all that, but definitely NOT a keeper by any means. And YES, I also agree that likely the main culprit here was the director (thus like CA said, not surprisingly the guy did only 2 other films) First thing on looking this up here on IMDb was 'Who the hell is that...???'Basically, pretty much the word 'amateurish' sums up my overall impression. Nice outdoor shots though; after viewing the film and before looking it up I would have sworn due to it's sort of dated execution (even for the time) that it had been made several years before this.As to the one comment in the discussion section, yes, Mariel does indeed look a tad 'Manish' (except for the lovely set displayed in the shower of course : ) but ever since seeing 'PERSONAL BEST' (cough...) I'm afraid that I've been quite taken with her (and that was BEFORE the implants!!!)Okay, okay... sorry to get carried away there... Basically there are MANY films starring these same people, not necessarily together of course, where they are LIGHT YEARS better. You wanna see a good solid Kurt Russell film, see either 'SOLDIER' (for Sci Fi fans) or 'THE THING' of course, for Horror fans, 'DARK BLUE' an excellent Police Drama / Thriller, or the more recent 'THE ART OF THE STEAL'. Another excellent film directed a MILLION times better than this one by the excellent Sidney Lumet, stars Andy Garcia and a lovely cast in 'NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN', another excellent Police Thriller!But, this one... just a '4' I'm afraid...

The first half of this find-the-serial killer movie was excellent. The story was very interesting and got me hooked into it, big-time. That made the second half really disappointing as the story evolved into one cliché after another. Two big examples: the killer abducting the hero's girlfriend and then making a surprise showing at his house at the end when everyone presumes he's dead. Man, how many movies does that happen? Too many.Kurt Russell plays his normal macho role and Mariel Hemingway joins him as the female lead. She looked nice. Overall, if you like crime movies it's worth seeing. But, rent it, don't buy it.