Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Despite the pedestrian screenplay (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan), Dujardin and Lellouche are magnetic performers who slip easily into their antagonistic roles.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Jimenez adopts a vintage-kitsch sensibility, taking a disappointingly generic approach to his hard-to-follow narrative.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A procedural epic whose complicated narrative is propelled by visceral action sequences and an unusually thrilling soundtrack.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Gangster movies should not be mildly interesting.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Jimenez's sprawling cat-and-mouse thriller loses momentum and focus in the homestretch, but until then its '70s sun-and-sin-on-the-Cote d'Azur vibe is electric.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
How can you dislike a film that signals a killing with "Bang Bang" and a villain with "The Snake"?

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
"The Connection" isn't all that different from a lot of police procedurals that have come before, but there's something about this particular gritty true-crime story that still fascinates all these years later.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Jimenez, making his second feature, fails to provide the regular jolts of electricity this material needs.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
While the story lacks focus here and there, the film never feels overplayed. It's a work of bloody style and solid substance.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It may prove too slow for some and the meandering can be a little maddening, but overall it's worth the effort.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
It starts with gunshots - a Mercedes and its driver are riddled by motorcycle-riding assassins in broad daylight - and the pace of "The Connection" is bang-bang brisk most of the rest of the way.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
There are no elaborate car chases or dizzyingly choreographed shootouts. Yet it's nonetheless a compelling portrait of two men in a specific time and place.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The film is engaging, propulsive, cut with rare brio, chockablock with consummate tough-guy business.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a stylish affair, very solidly made if not exactly breaking new ground in our understanding of events or in the way the movies depict them.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Riveting from its first moments, "The Connection" is fascinating in its presentation of character, as well as for its glimpse into the workings of an international drug empire and into the ways an imaginative cop found to chip at its power.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A common problem in crime-centric movies: The bad guys are almost always more fascinating than the good guys. Dujardin's bull-necked, hard-charging performance makes Pierre a worthy adversary.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Sports the most schnozz-tacular array of craggy-faced macho men this side of Easter Island.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
We know how the story ends, so there's little in the way of tension.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
This uninspiring, borderline inept spiritual drama about the Son of God's formative years preaches to the choir.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
Perhaps realizing that enticing nonbelievers into another movie about the life of Christ may necessitate the wild-style of a director like Darren Aronofsky, the filmmakers decided to play it safe rather than risk conservative Evangelical rejection.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Young Messiah struggles to hold its audience's attention.

Name : Nick Schager / Alias : Variety
This pious drama is a work of minimal imagination and even less subtlety.

Name : Andy Webster / Alias : New York Times
"The Young Messiah" performs no miracles.

Name : Noel Murray / Alias : Los Angeles Times
At times, this movie feels too much like the Christian version of "The Phantom Menace," offering unnecessary explanations for well-known stories.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
Mostly, The Brothers Grimsby simply wants to make you laugh. And it will.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Chaotic and crude - but its lack of sophistication feels like a badge of honour.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
The movie's scant 83 minutes dictate that The Brothers Grimsby proceed impatiently; the movie feels cut to fit the running time, rather than for the effectiveness of either the story or the comedy.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
A production that fails in every way at every turn.

Name : Tim Grierson / Alias : The New Republic
The movie has plenty of terrible scenes but also three very, very funny ones. I laughed a lot during those three moments, sometimes rather guiltily, but barely managed more than a chuckle elsewhere.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Compared to glib junk like Zoolander 2, The Brothers Grimsby is practically high art.

Name : Tim Cogshell / Alias : TheWrap
Do note, it's not dumb. Stupid, occasionally, but never dumb, not even when our heroes are inside the elephant vagina.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As a comedy, "The Brothers Grimsby" is weak and scattershot, but it's useful as an unintended self-indictment of the chattering classes' disgust and disdain for white working folk.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, the jokes are more stupefying than funny and no one's anatomy is safe from a gratuitous close-up, whether it's that of a wild animal or an Oscar nominee.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Grimsby's balls - actual balls - broke my dignity.

Name : Darren Franich / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
God help me, I laughed.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Sacha Baron Cohen takes a backward lurch.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they're grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script. is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
While there may be comedy gold in an elephant's vagina, Mr. Cohen fails to find it here.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
"Grimsby" punches down - at the sick, at the poor, at anyone who's not quick enough to get out of its sloppy roundhouse rights. Boy, chronically unemployed drunks sure are funny, aren't they?

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It's not unfunny in spots, but it huffs and puffs (among other bodily functions) more often than it splits the sides.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy brings the raunch - but the sharp satire is M.I.A.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
His obsession with anal cavities and what goes in and comes out of them suggest Cohen is auditioning to be the after-dinner amusement at a proctologists' convention.

Name : Gersh Kuntzman / Alias : New York Daily News
Full disclosure: I was the lone critic in America to unabashedly recommend "Zoolander 2," so I'm certainly not ashamed to even less abashedly beg you to go see "The Brothers Grimsby."

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
A smutty but strained spy spoof in which most of the human-based comedy stays comparatively flaccid.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
At the very least, it's more entertaining than the time Baron Cohen dumped ashes on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars but only barely.