Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
It's hard to tell how much time has passed between scenes, or just why, as the twists come, the characters would suddenly turn so dumb.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Triple 9 imagines itself a sprawling, nihilistic epic, and it floats along for a while on the shoulders of its prestige filmmaking and cast, but ultimately the storytelling just isn't up to the task.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Hillcoat directs with a sense of immediacy and grimy realism, bringing the audience into the shootouts and bloodshed on the streets. Atlanta becomes another war zone for the men who have seen war, battling an enemy of a different race and culture.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Triple 9 races past in a blur of crime and action scenes, with plenty of violence and the odd spot of gallows humour to keep things interesting.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Hillcoat's approach is to craft a pulse-pounding experience that employs a mixture of conventional footage and hand-held work. There's an immediacy to the most gripping scenes.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The most impressive thing about Triple 9 is that it somehow manages to be both predictable and incoherent at the same time. Well, that and the fact that it manages to make half a dozen good actors look really lost.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Though compelling in the acting and cinematography, Triple 9's plot is by the numbers and about nothing.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Triple 9 is no Reservoir Dogs, but it is a twisty, terrific ride. And Kate Winslet has a blast with the Russian accent, the wig, the attitude.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
John Hillcoat packs a binge watch of characters and incidents into this corrupt-cop thriller.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
[Hillcoat is] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The slam-bang opening bank robbery and chase channels the best of Michael Mann from his Heat days. But Triple 9 soon bleeds out and becomes a perfunctory hodgepodge of other crime movies.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
There's a blue-chip cast running the gamut from A (Casey Affleck) to W (Kate Winslet) and terrific action sequences in Triple 9 - but in the end, this relentlessly nihilistic crime-caper thriller adds up to less than the sum of its impressive parts.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
The uneven thing [here] is John Hillcoat's direction: a tense, sustained journey through an apartment while lined up behind a bulletproof shield alternating with indulgent zooms and cuts depicting local color.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Matt Cook's maiden feature-length screenplay-something about dirty Atlanta cops being blackmailed by the Russian Jewish mafia-is so murky it leaves the whole cast looking tentative, if not defensive.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
If you're in the right frame of mind for a lurid, blood-soaked B-movie with an A-list cast, Triple 9 is just the ticket.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
It's got everything except a real script. Or director.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Most parties concerned maintain their grim countenances, their characters struggling to find the sweet spot between honor and greed, between doing the right thing and doing the absolute worst.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
There are a lot of great actors here and surprisingly good action scenes and a tense ending, all of which make "Triple 9" one of the more enjoyable urban crime dramas in recent memory.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Although "Triple 9" was most likely just a paycheck film for all involved, its go-for-the-gut efficiency can't be denied.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Triple 9" doesn't exactly transcend its genre, but it definitely exploits it for all it's worth.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Hillcoat brings stray moments of style and surprise to "Triple 9" but not nearly enough to save it; for every twist you don't see coming, there are five you probably will.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Without much investment, one just sits back with increasing detachment and bemused curiosity as to where and on whom the next shoe will drop.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Triple 9" feels more like a collection of good scenes than a novel, propulsive whole. Viewers are apt to be entertained by the film's visceral pulp pleasures, but left apathetic when it comes to its instantly forgettable genre cliches.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Triple 9" is a superbly crafted film, the sort of big-screen roller coaster I admire even if its plot falters.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
If there's a police code it merits, it's a "10-22": "Disregard."

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Triple 9" is as heartless as the people who infest it-the exception being a decent cop, Chris Allen, played by Casey Affleck-and mannered to the point of self-parody.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A miserable, misguided police drama that almost seems to hate the police.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
One of those productions in which much of the creative energy has been funneled into gaudily inventive displays of violence.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Cops prowl darkened mazes, looking for perps they probably couldn't see even if they found them.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Given the movie's bloody stew of greed and sadism, its unbalanced frames and ear-scraping soundscape, its moral tidiness can bring a smile to your otherwise appalled face.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Tight, taut and brilliantly structured.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
#AllLivesMatter? Not here. Hillcoat wants us to admit the truth behind the robbers' callous calculation: Some people are worth more than others.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
The action is bracing, the twists sprightly, but the sum of its parts sits heavy, like a meal that won't digest.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Triple 9 is like a David Ayer film on steroids, which is to say it's like Training Day if most of the characters were as morally compromised as Denzel Washington's.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
A modern-day heist thriller of unusually grim, coiled intensity .

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
It's not going to make anyone forget Jaws, but it delivers the kind of breathless tension that justifies its existence.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Yes, there's shameless bikini ogling, but what could have been throwaway exploitation is instead a frequently gripping portrait of dire-straits resourcefulness.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Is "The Shallows" a thriller for the ages? No, but it's decent popcorn fare.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
A fitfully entertaining mix of offscreen gore and Maxim-esque T&A.

Name : Andrea Gronvall / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is silly stuff but often genuinely scary, with excellent aerial and undersea photography and some persuasive special effects.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The Shallows is a great-looking film, peppered with overhead long shots of the amazingly clear water, and some terrific underwater photography as well.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The Shallows is almost a good movie.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
For what it is, "The Shallows" works.

Name : Edward Douglas / Alias : New York Daily News
The Shallows isn't bad as much-needed escapist summer fun

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Lively may have been cast primarily for her physique, but she proves a compelling heroine all the same.

Name : Glenn Kenny / Alias : New York Times
[Lively] acquits herself well here, especially in the vulnerable-to-shark-attack department.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
The Shallows pushes the buttons it's supposed to push for a summerthriller, even if the outcome is as deflating as it dumb.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The girl kept talking and strategizing as heavy string music played on the soundtrack.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Lively can act, and she does a good job with a very difficult role here - holding our interest and sympathy for a feature-length movie with no one to talk to for most of it.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
The progression from personal drama to surf film to (wo)man vs. nature story to full-on creature feature is smooth, even expert, and always managed with handsome panache.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
You're gonna need a bigger Blake (and you're going to get one) in Lively's enjoyably trashy shark-survival movie, the definition of summer fun.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's all patently ridiculous. But Blake Lively, director Collet-Serra and a digital shark show no mercy in hooking us with the B-movie tension. And we bite.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
If the amount of surfing/suffering/staring-at-dark-skies footage rendered in slow motion were depicted at normal speed, "The Shallows" would run about a minute and a half.

Name : Chris Klimek / Alias : NPR
The Shallows is a thoroughly mediocre specimen of the externalized-grief survival flick, distinguished by a strong performance from Gossip Girl alumnus Lively.

Name : Peter Hartlaub / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
The most important parts, the ones involving the shark, don't feel genuine.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Clocking in at a svelte 87 minutes, the film knows its audience and the limits of that audience's patience with fare like this.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A snack-size thriller that isn't quite enough to satisfy.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
School's out, schlock's in - no lessons here.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
The Shallows is brisk and engaging, and a great vehicle for Lively. The film has the sort of breathtaking cinematography that will inspire you to visit the ocean. And a story that may stop you from ever going into the water again.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
We're gonna need a bigger boat?" "We're gonna need a smaller bikini," more like.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Los Angeles Times
If you're looking for a quick and satisfying summer thrill - a reminder that all you really need to make a movie is a girl and a flare gun - then the aptly titled Blake Lively-vs.-shark thriller "The Shallows" should serve you nicely.