LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors'' is to "In the Company of Men'' as Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction'' was to "Reservoir Dogs.'' In both cases, the second film reveals the full scope of the talent, and the director, given greater resources, paints what he earlier sketched.

It is superbly executed and, for all its pitilessness, it's an intelligent dramatization of the impact that consumerist values have had on the psyche of the North American middle class at the end of the 20th century.

Savagely funny black comedy.

Bleak, scathing, and utterly compelling.

What keeps you in your seat is the acting. Keener, crisply and coolly playing against type, commands the screen. [24 August 1998, p. 58]

LaBute's narrative structure and visual strategies are rigorously crafted, bespeaking an almost mathematical calculation that, in compellingly contradictory ways, both enhances the dramatic experience while undermining its very authenticity.

LaBute achieves a bracing originality by observing human folly as a means to understand rather than condemn. Love or hate his films, LaBute is one of the most challenging filmmakers to emerge in years.

Offers a brilliant raw look at sexual heeling. [19 August 1998, p. 35]

LaBute has crafted one of the most explicit and hilarious films of the year; it's a slow-moving affair, with little camera movement and only the merest hint of a soundtrack.

The web of lies, failures and brutal revelations here is strong stuff, and it's the work of an original filmmaker who takes no prisoners.

The horror of LaBute's articulate, self-deluded characters is that they're both sharply drawn and just vague enough that you can insert face here.

A fascinatingly mean-spirited erotic comedy.

What is remarkable is the absolute cool with which LaBute charts his story: The director has the soul of an assassin.

The acting and writing is a cut above the ordinary.