It is fair to state that Joan Crawford has a somewhat unsettled career in the Strand's new picture from the Warners, a murky thing called "Flamingo Road." At the start of this jumbled melodrama, Miss Crawford is a carnival girl, solemnly bent upon retirement in a barbarous southern town. Successively thereafter she is a waitress in a cheap cafe, an inmate of the workhouse, an employe of a sporting resort, the mistress and wife of a political chieftain and, eventually, a jailbird again.

In the course of this rather vagrant circuit, she initially falls in love with a young and aristocratic weakling who proves unworthy of her. That is to say, he forsakes her on the advice of his political boss who doesn't want this young hopeful getting mixed up with any strays. Then she transfers her affections to the rival political camp and soon finds herself playing housewife to the opposing boss. However, her suppressed emotions are unstable until her old suitor blows out his brains and she accidentally shoots his master. Then she knows that she loves the man she has wed. At the end, they are planning a happy future from her temporary lodgings in the jail.

Miss Crawford runs this gamut in ninety-four minutes flat, and we think it rather significant that she isn't even winded at the end. Indeed, she has evidently disciplined and conditioned herself to the point where she can go through such an ordeal without showing the slightest strain. From one dramatic crisis to the next one, she moves like a sleek automaton. Her face, deeply plastered with make-up, is an ageless, emotionless mask. Adversity only registers now and then in her glycerin-moistened eyes. Hers is a Spartan demonstration of bearing-up-under-it-well.

And that appears all that this picture was really designed to achieve, a mechanized demonstration of Miss Crawford's fortitude. For it is plain that the open-eyed inspection of political corruption that is promised at one point is midway diverted into channels that will only favor the involvement of the star. Politics goes out the window—or become a sweetly reformed gentlemen's game—when it finally becomes a matter of getting Miss Crawford straightened out.

Set up for her convenience are Sydney Greenstreet as a vicious scalawag who rules the political machinery in a geographically vague southern town; Zachary Scott as the soft-hearted weakling and David Brian as the other political boss who becomes Miss Crawford's idolater simply because she can cook bacon crisp and mix a whisky-sour. Also around and torturing accents with supposedly Dixie twangs are Gladys George as a sporting-house madam and Gertrude Michael as a hash-house belle.

Have no anxiety for the author, Robert Wilder, who wrote the book from which the film was taken. He wrote the script. And Michael Curtiz directed it with the obvious intention of making Miss Crawford devastating for her fans. How the latter will take it, deponent knoweth not.

Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune (1949):

    Joan Crawford acquits herself ably in an utterly nonsensical and undefined part. As a carnival performer who determines to move to the right side of an anomalous town, she is attractive and vital. It is no fault of hers that she cannot handle the complicated romances and double crosses in which she is involved. Maintaining an impeccable reputation by virtue of Hollywood's tacit censorship, she falls in love with one man, marries another, and finally kills the villain. The recurrent line in her dialogue is: "I'm not sure."

David Kronke from One-shop.com:

    Besides its still-fresh political cynicism, what keeps the film interesting is the showdowns between Crawford and Greenstreet, who both give performances representative of their distinguished careers. Crawford fairly hisses at the corpulent Greenstreet, "You just wouldn't believe how much trouble it is to get rid of a dead elephant." Greenstreet, clearly, forgets that this is Joan Crawford he's dealing with.

from MonsterHunter.com (2004):

     Crawford's performance in this one is quite subdued, so if you're looking for campy moments, you'll probably want to check out her later films, but it's really Greenstreet's effort that makes the movie worth seeking out. His Semple is one of the great "regular guy" villains who's frightening because of how effortlessly and callously he plots. This is a guy who acts like it's practically in his job description as sheriff to ruin people who get in his way. He and Joan have some good scenes together whether its when he's comparing her to a rat that bit off his toes or when she was comparing him to an elephant they had to shoot at the carny or when he's smacking her upside the head with that telephone.  Complete (funnily weird and rambling) review.