The film is a mass of inoperative whimsies and conceits; they're imperative even on the dumbest sci-fi level, because Boorman isn't enough of a writer to make them work together.

[Zardoz] demonstrates how one can make a cheap sci-fi flick look like a cheap sci-fi flick by using mirrors and prisms as substitutes for imagination.

You have to hand it to John Boorman. When he's brilliant, he's brilliant (Point Blank, Deliverance) but when he's terrible, he's really terrible.

A maddeningly inconsistent movie.