Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Despite rugged craft and a seaworthy ensemble, Kevin Macdonald's low-key submarine thriller never quite sparks to life.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
Old-fashioned storytelling values and zeitgeisty relevance make for a worthy addition to sub-aquatic cinema's nerve-juddering legacy.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
An alleged cautionary tale that revels in bad behavior for nearly two hours before finally offering up a stern "tsk, tsk, tsk."

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Although the performances are uniformly on point and the dialogue is tartly British, the film ultimately fails to earn its riotous stripes.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Brits might object to such an enraging portrayal, which veers between salacious and cynical, though Scherfig's unique perspective is just one more reason she was such a smart choice to handle this material.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
For a movie about a bunch of debauched Oxford swells, The Riot Club is remarkably lacking in wit.and debauchery, for that matter.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
I was drained and quivering with fury and disgust.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
A darkly funny, colossally unflattering send-up of The Bullingdon Club.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
The Riot Club comes with the dubious ambition of instructing us as to the evil ways of spoiled British toffs, as if that were needed.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Scherfig, who showed such subtlety in "An Education," this time proves embarrassingly vulgar, giving the film the unfortunate aura of an angry leaflet being handed out on a street corner by a wild-eyed protester.

Name : Tomas Hachard / Alias : NPR
It's all quite superficial, but never less than gripping, and is aided by an ending that at least doesn't compromise too much-the movie finishes with a smirk more than a smile.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : Village Voice
Scherfig's stagings of these suspenseful set pieces are masterful, but the rest of the thriller is a fairly predictable manifesto against Britain's de facto oligarchy.

Name : Graham Fuller / Alias : New York Daily News
[An] engaging but malignant look at male privilege run amok.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
While the dark drama is never dull, its portrait of upper-crust entitlement run amok is seldom surprising either.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
The movie as a whole is such an incompetent train wreck, you can't look away, just to see how much worse it can get.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Wrongheaded, utterly incompetent, and nearly laugh-free .

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A tortured use of another movie's absurd mythology to help make muddled quasi-satirical points, while indulging the apparently fail-safe punchline of saying the word "purge" about once a minute.