Critics explain their appreciation for Glengarry

hospital set in progress
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Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers wrote, "The pleasure of this unique film comes in watching superb actors dine on Mamet's pungent language like the feast it is".[13] Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times said, "Mamet's dialogue has a kind of logic, a cadence, that allows people to arrive in triumph at the ends of sentences we could not possibly have imagined. There is great energy in it. You can see the joy with which these actors get their teeth into these great lines, after living through movies in which flat dialogue serves only to advance the story".[14]

Newsweek's Jack Kroll praised Alec Baldwin's performance: "Baldwin is sleekly sinister in the role of Blake, a troubleshooter caned in to shake up the salesmen. He shakes them up, all right, but this character (not in the original play) also shakes up the movie's toned balance with his sheer noise and scatological fury".[15]

In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised, "the utterly demonic skill with which these foulmouthed characters carve one another up in futile attempts to stave off disaster. It's also because of the breathtaking wizardry with which Mr. Mamet and Mr. Foley have made a vivid, living film that preserves the claustrophobic nature of the original stage work".[16]