Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's a very good film about a very bad man. But as well-crafted and well-acted as it is, it never rises to greatness because we've been watching this story in one way or another going back to the time of Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Johnny Depp is more engaging than he's been in years, even if his performance can feel a little restricted and one-note.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A bleak, claustrophobic based-on-fact film that draws us completely into a dark world of crime and complicity.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
[Depp] holds the screen as pure malevolence.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's as if the spirit of a psychopath like Bulger resists the camera. Or maybe the movie isn't imaginative enough to penetrate his shell.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
There are moments of icy violence, and some great lived-in faces among the characters. But this is no "Goodfellas." It's just another punk, talking tough.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Depp's brutal antihero is the highlight of this compelling if somewhat familiar gangster movie.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
If there's a problem with Black Mass, it's that the general arc of the story is well known.its details reflect the plot points of many other gangster films. But it's the getting there that's the thrill.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Black Mass" is the sort of gangland film you would call run of the mill, if only it dashed faster.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The acting here is much stronger and more soulful than I would have expected, and not only from Depp.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
Propelled by a raw and primal performance by Johnny Depp, Scott Cooper's Black Mass will have you barricading your doors and hiding under the bed after seeing this corrosive gangster film.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
In scene after scene, some fine actors go to town and dive into the material gratefully.

Name : Peter Hartlaub / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Black Mass" is a solid piece of filmmaking, from subtle beginning to the excessive end.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is the sort of movie Sidney Lumet might have made in his prime - intelligently written, handsomely mounted, and loaded with top actors.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Black Mass" isn't pretty, but it certainly is strong.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
This is Depp bringing his skills to the table as a man with a propensity for being both terrifying and charming, often switching between the two on a dime.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
The role is Depp's best in many years, and a welcome respite from the parade of prancing pseudo-villains-Mortdecai, the Wolf, Barnabas Collins, Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka-to which he has devoted far too much of his career.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Depp shines in a solid gangster biopic.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
It's one of those movies that you don't exactly enjoy (so many guns, so many deaths), but you appreciate for its craft and tension, and for its cast's willingness to lose themselves in the darkness.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
While there's nothing totally new here, Black Mass works the tropes extremely well and sets the scene early in the mean streets of 1970s South Boston.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Welcome back to the real world, Mr. Depp.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This is a good, solid, well-executed crime story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A crime drama that creeps and drips blood like a horror movie, and in many respects it is.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Whenever Depp is on screen, nothing else matters.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Black Mass isn't The Departed, and it's a bit too black and white. But movie mobster fans can relax, cause the movie doesn't need to have a hit taken out on it.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Black Mass more or less limits itself to procedural status. Within those aims, it's a pretty good one, absorbing and well-made.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Black Mass, a down and dirty crime drama based on the exploits of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, is thrilling for a number of reasons.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Black Mass struggles to find something new to say about organized crime and the loyalty between men. But the only thing the film manages to do is remind us we've seen all this stuff done before, and done better.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Johnny Depp does career-best work as notorious Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger in Scott Cooper's taut, elegantly understated crime drama.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Black Mass is a tightly wound piece of work, and Cooper keeps its many small parts moving with ease.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie's good enough that you should see it if you want to. But you don't have to, and, in these parts, that matters.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
For Black Mass, Johnny Depp has dusted off his A-game, which has lain dormant for far too long.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
It's absolutely chilling to watch Depp. With bad teeth and a head of dramatically receding hair, the actor somewhat resembles Jack Nicholson in The Departed but deftly avoids caricature as he grows more sinister with every murder.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Depp's performance as Bulger is as strong, and as energized, as anything he's done on screen for years.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
I'm as susceptible as any other deskbound, conflict-averse fantasist to the visceral appeal of a good gangster movie. But "Black Mass" isn't one.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
What "Black Mass" gains in moral honesty, it loses in dramatic momentum. Even filmmakers and actors as fine as these haven't managed to solve one of cinema's most enduring challenges - making criminals interesting without exalting them.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
How much longer must we subscribe, as moviegoers, to the sentimental brotherhood of violence?

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
You forgive the zigs, zags, evasions and subplots for the hardcore power of Depp's performance and the film's portrait of moral rot on both sides of the law.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The acting in "Black Mass" is tremendous.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
With all the talent on board here, expectations go beyond creepiness; unfortunately creepiness is about as far as the movie ultimately goes.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
"Black Mass" is a riveting character study and might land Depp an Oscar nomination, even if the film itself is not very ambitious.

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.