Metacritic reviews

A slick, stylish sequel to Harper (1966), this private-eye film has Newman reprising the role of Ross MacDonald's cool gumshoe, Lew Harper.

The Drowning Pool is stylish, improbable, entertaining, superficial, well cast, and totally synthetic. Stuart Rosenberg’s direction is functional and unexciting.

A confusing and not very exciting private eye caper.

This second time around for Harper is a lackluster workout despite its colorful settings, occasional tension and a cast that includes Joanne Woodward (Mrs. Newman). As a convoluted caper it generates action rather than character and surface mystery rather than meaning.

You can tell from the credit sequence—when Paul Newman takes four minutes to execute a simple expository gag—that this Stuart Rosenberg sequel to Harper is likely to be an interminable drag. And the opener is really the high point of an alleged thriller that wastes the talents of Newman, Joanne Woodward, Murray Hamilton, and Tony Franciosa, and telegraphs all its narrative twists with the subtlety of a Chicago building inspector explaining how to avoid a violation.

What matters in this type of film is not so much the plot as the way in which an atmosphere is created. Unfortunately, Rosenberg directs flatly, hopping from one set piece to the next, disjointedly throwing characters of varying interest across Newman's path, while the latter - in his coarsest performance yet - remains content to wisecrack and ham outrageously.

The exception to a listless cast is Murray Hamilton as the oil-develper villain, an eloquently indirect Southerner with enough shifts in mood to make one whis he had a larger part, but not regret the movie's one payoff--his well staged and satisfactory demise. [14 July 1975, p.58]

A tired piece of hackwork rescued only by the presence of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The whole enterprise moves in slow motion, with its programed music predicting each routine step. [07 July 1975, p.57]