Roger Ebert Gave A Perfect Score To Brad Pitt's Criminally Underseen 1993 Thriller

The late, great Roger Ebert made some fantastic calls in his time, as well as a few questionable ones. But the critic got it right when he championed the 1993 Brad Pitt-led thriller "Kalifornia" as "unflinchingly honest" and "so well acted that for most of the film [Ebert] abandoned any detachment and just watched it as if [he] were observing the lives of real people."

Ebert remains one of the most important critics of both the 20th and 21st centuries. The first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, the man's influence went far beyond intellectual circles. His opinion mattered to large swathes of the general public and he did more to keep film criticism relevant in pop culture than arguably any other reviewer in history. Rotten Tomatoes might be partially Roger Ebert's fault, but he remains a legend even more than a decade after his 2013 passing.

Still, that doesn't mean Ebert always got it right. He was the only critic to give a perfect score to Samuel L. Jackson's mediocre thriller Lakeview Terrace while handing out a mere two stars to "A Clockwork Orange." Thankfully, when "Kalifornia" debuted in 1993, Ebert was right on the mark, bestowing a full four stars upon the film and heralding Pitt's performance at a time when the young star was still up and coming.

Brad Pitt almost ended his career early with a gutsy move on his first movie. The actor tried inserting a line into his background role as a waiter, only to be chastised for it. That was 1987, however, and by 1993 Pitt no longer needed to secure a speaking part to get his SAG card. By this point, the young actor had established his talent by playing cowboy hitchhiker J.D. in Ridley Scott's celebrated 1991 comedy drama "Thelma & Louise." Throughout the early 90s Pitt solidified his position as one of Hollywood's most in-demand leading men with standout performances in 1994 features "Legends of the Fall" and "Interview with the Vampire" before inhabiting one of his best roles to date with the enduringly chilling "Seven" in '95.

Before all that, however, he appeared in Dominic Sena's oft-overlooked thriller "Kalifornia." The movie stars David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes as journalist Brian Kessler and photographer Carrie Laughlin, a couple who embark on a cross-country road trip to document the places where famous serial killings have occurred. But the pair end up unwittingly sharing their journey with an absolute psychopath in the form of Pitt's killer Early Grace, who brings his naive girlfriend, Adele (Juliette Lewis), along for the ride.

In 1990, Pitt had starred alongside Lewis in the NBC television movie "Too Young to Die?" in which he played a young addict who takes advantage of Lewis' abused runaway. In "Kalifornia," Pitt's character once again takes advantage of Lewis' character, this time as a full-on violent serial killer who abuses Adele behind closed doors. As horrific as that all sounds, Pitt and Lewis are just great in the roles, and while most critics weren't all that impressed with the movie, Ebert was bowled over.

"Kalifornia" isn't one of the most well-known Brad Pitt movies and it was, unfortunately, a box office bomb, bringing in just $2.4 million on an $8.5 million budget. What's more, many reviewers were unconvinced by the direction and tone of the film, all of which combined to doom Dominic Sena's thriller to a legacy of being overlooked and underappreciated. Still, plenty of critics liked Pitt's performance, with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone describing the then-29-year-old as "outstanding." 

In his review, Roger Ebert went even further. The critic described Pitt and Juliette Lewis' performances as " two of the most harrowing and convincing" he'd ever seen. But it wasn't just the performances that won over Ebert, who otherwise described the film as saying "something important about the murderous energies at loose in society." He praised the way in which "Kalifornia" forces the four characters "to actually deal with one another, so that we see a confrontation between voyeurs who are turned on by violence (as long as it's at arm's-length) and those who are actually capable of killing."

As such, we'd all do well to take Ebert's advice and give the film a watch at a time when true crime entertainment has turned pretty much all of us into the "voyeurs" described by the critic. 2025 was arguably the year true crime went too far, and a reckoning with our shared fascination and often fetishization of killers has long been overdue. Well, now you can interrogate that very issue with a peak-hotness Pitt delivering one of his most delightfully unhinged performances to date. Thankfully, the whole movie is available on free streamer Tubi, and you can rest assured, this ain't no "Lakeview Terrace."