Production notes

The source novel and the original film featured pro wrestling, which was by the early 1990s targeted mostly at children, instead of boxing. Like the earlier 1950 film noir, the film was released by 20th Century Fox. It was chosen as the closing feature for the 1992 New York Film Festival.

Janet Maslin felt that the film "is colorfully acted and refreshingly free of all the moody cliches such a story might be expected to thrive on. But it is also saddled with overly busy direction that sometimes interferes with the dialogue, making Mr. Price's long, perversely elegant conversational riffs hard to hear." Writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe began his review, "There are few finer pleasures than watching Robert De Niro when he's on. In "Night and the City," he lights up the board as Harry Fabian, New York City's biggest shyster." Howe concluded that De Niro's performance was one of his best. Roger Ebert disagreed, dismissing De Niro's work as "more like a riff on Rupert Pupkin, the goofy talk show fan he played in Scorsese's The King of Comedy". Ebert and Howe both agreed, however, that Alan King's performance was fantastic. Owen Gleiberman concurred in his review, but he sided with Ebert regarding De Niro, concluding, "the actor who once seemed the heir to Brando, Clift, and, yes, Widmark — the actor who once got so far inside his roles that he just about detonated the screen — now plays characters who don't seem to have any inner life at all." David Ansen praised the actors in his review: "De Niro is a sensationally manic-and even touching-sleaze; King, Warden and Gorman are splendidly disreputable, and Lange gives her role a tough/tender sexuality that's a pleasure to watch even when her character's loyalty to Harry confounds sense." As of April 2019, Night and the City holds a rating of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews.