"Sherrill gives his Minotaur a ­forlorn Buster Keaton dignity. M has a silent film’s starring role in the midst of a ­country-and-western talkie. Precisely by limiting the beast to deeds, not speech, the writer eventually creates—against all odds—a living hybridized contradiction. M, if stuck in the quicksand of our ­ticky-tack present, somehow still participates in the silent scale of myth."