Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The first hour of this latest film from French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is sleek, terrific pulp.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script by Taylor Sheridan, the film manages to somehow be sleek and sprawling, focused and cagey at the same time, often in the same scene.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Succeeds in evoking the anarchic violence of the drug wars raging on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
If the film is a little too macho and far too Anglo to tell the full, ugly story of all the villains and victims, it is, like all of Villeneuve's films, a bravura piece of filmmaking.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Director Denis Villeneuve, aided and abetted by cinematographer Roger Deakins, fills Sicario with dread and a violence that happens to be stunning to look at.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It has a screenplay of freshness and audacity that's brought to life by a director who understands its every psychological undercurrent. We might hope this kind of thing would happen all the time, but it's rare.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
[Villeneuve] hasn't forgotten that he's making a thriller, and he's made one that's both nerve-shatteringly suspenseful and, thanks to noted cinematographer Roger Deakins, gorgeous to watch.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Mixes arthouse and grindhouse into a most satisfying cocktail.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Time Out
Denis Villeneuve takes on the Mexican drug trade in this stern, robust, abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter thriller.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
'Prisoners' director Denis Villeneuve returns with a blisteringly suspenseful, ever surprising cartel thriller.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
Villeneuve has crafted a compelling, unflinching look at the deadly and complicated war on drugs, one that will challenge the attitudes of even the most straight-edged and law-abiding viewers.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Sicario opens on a power chord of fear, nausea, and dread that resonates throughout the whole movie.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Denis Villeneuve's film turns out to be a stupendously unnerving descent into moral chaos, our presumed action hero Alice in Cartel-land.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan aren't selling more than a tautological action movie with the dread and body count of a horror film.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
One can easily ignore the film's ambitious subtext and enjoy it strictly on the basis of its terrific performances and nonstop intensity.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Villeneuve's proven he's got a strong punch. The trouble is, he barely aims.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
We can thank Villeneuve and rookie screenwriter Taylor Sheridan's tight script, but also Blunt, Brolin and Del Toro, each of whom has never been better.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
This is not the first movie about the war being waged across the U.S.-Mexico border over the drug trade, but it's the first film in which the aura of constant menace and threat lingers and follows you home.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Villeneuve's movies occupy a spectrum between thought-provoking and mind-bending, and it's clear that he wants to guide Taylor Sheridan's script into similar territory.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
If "Sicario" does not collapse under its own grimness, that is because of the pulse: the care with which Villeneuve keeps the story beating, like a drum, as he steadies himself for the next set piece.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
A well-deserved showcase for Emily Blunt.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
By the end, it packs a death stare so potent it will make you want to turn a blind eye to the shadowy brutality of its real-world horrors.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
An unforgettable motion picture that should be on the must-see list for anyone who appreciates films that deal in grays rather than blacks and whites.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
Director Denis Villeneuve delivers screenwriter Taylor Sheridan's story layer by layer, never overwhelming the audience while still challenging it to pay attention.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The violence of the inter-American drug trade has served as the backdrop for any number of films for more than three decades, but few have been as powerful and superbly made as Sicario.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Sicario paints the bleakest of portraits of a realistic situation, drawn from headlines about Mexican cartels that stack bodies with savage efficiency.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Far from being just another crime story, "Sicario" is cinema at its most ambitious.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Combining relentless action with the story of a woman confronting a corrupted system, it hits with the staggering energy of a visceral kick in the guts - causing a sensory recoil in every scene.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This is one of the best movies of the year.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Within this dark epic of American failure lives an effective but decidedly minor vigilante flick.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Johann Johannsson combine to make the action scenes gorgeous, scary and exciting, while the script by Taylor Sheridan is mordant and smart, with not a wasted word.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
After a while these sounds and images start to feel like expressions of technique, and they become at once numbing and sensational, and instead of a movie about violence we're watching another violent movie, after all.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
There are no rules, and no reason, in this world of death and revenge, and we see it through Kate's eyes: fascinated, repelled, ultimately haunted.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is suspenseful stuff, but hanging over the action is the pungent smell of social failure, as the drug war turns both sides into monsters.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
This dramatic thriller finds a spot somewhere between your brain and your stomach, and drills in.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Sicario is a remarkable, thrilling, intermittently brilliant film-and yet nonetheless a mild disappointment.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
A gripping and tension-packed spin through America's covert War on Drugs. Prepare to be haunted for a good long time.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
With a taut and timely screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is a brilliant action thriller with the smarts of a message movie.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Villeneuve handles action scenes with impressive flair, but also understands that the key to effective action is to build up to it slowly and inexorably.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Everyone here is in way over his or her head.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
This is what all the fuss was about?

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out New York
The Interview confirms Rogen as the most ambitious mainstream comedian in Hollywood.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
That something so carefully slapdash and happily juvenile actually resulted in cyber-sabotage and threats of violence is, in itself, an enormous kind of joke. Too bad it's the biggest one here.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The film is not a dangerous weapon, or a tool for anti-Korean propaganda. It does kill, but with comedy.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
There's a whip-smart, pointed comedy in "The Interview." Unfortunately it's buried in there. Really deep.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's certainly smutty-and infantile. Maybe half the jokes miss. But it is a truly savage work.

Name : Ben Kenigsberg / Alias : AV Club
Much of the film is devoted to the hit-and-miss (but strangely moving) riffing between the leading men.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Characterizing it as satire elevates the creative execution of the film's very silly faux assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un far beyond what it merits.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's stupid. It's in bad taste. It impossible. I know all that. But Rogen's instinct to try anything for giggles and sticking it to dictatorial assholes is worth fighting for. Screw Kim if he can't take a joke.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Te best satire provokes and even outrages, and Rogen, Franco and Goldberg certainly succeed on that score.

Name : G. Allen Johnson / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Imagine "Harold and Kumar Go to North Korea," or "Bill and Ted's Excellent North Korean Adventure" or even "The Road to Pyongyang" starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. You get the idea.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
About as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Hate to say it, but this film ain't half the satire it could have been.

Name : Aisha Harris / Alias : Slate
If you like your dictator mockery served on a sharper, smarter dish, you should probably just do what everyone else seems to be doing, and rewatch Team America: World Police.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The Interview fails to live up to the hype, floundering as a rowdy comedy as it grows duller by the minute.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A dangerous comedy about a dangerous regime shouldn't be safe for suburban dads.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Bluntly funny and ever-so-slightly sweet.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
"The Interview" struggles to really illuminate anything about the stranger-than-fiction Orwellian nightmare that is North Korea, but its attempt is admirable. It deserves to be seen.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Its lesson is that American pop culture is inescapable, our great achievement and most popular export, the weapon we wield abroad and the glue trap we struggle with at home.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
In their third film together, Franco and Rogen have a terrific banter and an underlay of affection. This kind of rapport is rare.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The Interview has the comic batting average of a mediocre-to-average Saturday Night Live sketch .

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While The Interview never slacks in its mission to tell jokes, it's such a messy and meandering movie that it never quite lands as a satire of politics or the media or anything else.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Like their affable, ignorant characters, Rogen and Franco seem in way over their heads with "The Interview."

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
What's wrong with The Interview is that it doesn't know how to be the singeing comedy it wants.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Maybe you will love The Interview - if you can ever see the movie - as much as some people hate or fear it. But if you're hoping for any cogent political satire here, then the joke's on you.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Offers a few moments of casual brilliance but otherwise trips itself up in the threads of its contrived absurdity.