Libertine, The

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This one-of-a-kind spellbinder from first-time director Laurence Dunmore is not afraid to shock. Depp is a raunchy wonder, especially in a time-capsule-worthy opening monologue.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

As the imperious actress (and whore) Elizabeth Barry, the unlikely object of Wilmot's affection, Samantha Morton finds the soul in a woman who's hard as nails, and Tom Hollander and Rosamund Pike also provide excellent support. The haunting score is by Michael Nyman.

New York Post Kyle Smith

This film isn't pretty, but it has some kick: It is to "Shakespeare in Love" what wild pheasant is to Chicken McNuggets.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Depp accepts the character and all of its baggage, and works without a net.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

Johnny Depp makes a riveting antihero in a dark and bawdy period drama.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

An interesting film, and a good one, with a harrowing performance by Depp, whose apparent enjoyment of the role seems only to increase as his character deteriorates.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

As the depraved John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Johnny Depp adds yet another sly sleazoid to his burgeoning portrait gallery.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Johnny Depp's coruscating, rigorously uningratiating performance as debauched, self-destructive 17th-century aristocrat John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, is the glue that doesn't quite hold together first-time director Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of Stephen Jeffreys' 1994 play.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Illuminated by dim candles and the rare glimmer of sun, the movie is grainy, closed-in, and likely to cause spasms of claustrophobia.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a bit too muddy, dismal-looking and smoky to beguile us, too fixated on filth and too dreary-looking to really shock us.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Unfortunately, the dialogue undermines the movie's promise.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A movie that serves up what its debauched subject would never have countenanced -- sanitized smut with a moral attached.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Do we like John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester? As played by Depp, this 17th-century nobleman-cum-travesty is a carriage crash of epic proportions, and so it's difficult not to crane your neck around to get a better view of the proceedings.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The rhythms of the dialogue move to the same beat as steadily as a metronome ticks and tocks, while every sentence is polished like stone, absent the jaggedness of real breath and life. You can hear the play in this thing without even knowing it was based on a theatrical production.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Starting out seductive but ending up tiresome, debuting director Laurence Dunmore's pic is an honorable misfire.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Deep and Morton are really flying here (the scene in which the hero instructs the heroine in the passionate possibilities of her art), and they leave the rest of the film looking heavy on its feet. The second half, especially, grows dour and maundering, and by the end the movie seems to flail in desperation, more like a work in progress than like a finished piece.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The Libertine's trouble lies precisely in its efforts at conjuring the historical past: No one in the film seems much more convinced than I am that because playwrights and authors wrote in clever, high post-Elizabethan diction, then everyone spoke that way every day, in the pubs, with whores.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

But by the end, you're only watching to see how far Wilmot's pustules will spread, or whether his various diseases will really make his nose fall off.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A glorious disaster.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

What comes from the mouth of Johnny Depp...not the crucial spark of wit or insight that could encourage us to spend two hours with this cruel bore.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Not since Philip Kaufman's 2000 "Quills," the story of the Marquis de Sade, have we had so debauched a literary and movie hero, and Johnny Depp plays him with the relish of an actor who has made odd-ball characters his specialty.

USA Today Claudia Puig

If your idea of a good time is watching a disjointed period piece featuring a scrawny dog defecating, dozens of dissipated people fornicating and a syphilitic Johnny Depp with oozing pustules on his face, The Libertine may be just the movie for you.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Dunmore creates a memorably grimy London, but the moral grime covering the film proves less memorable.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A trying experience. As we watch Rochester fall apart in spectacular fashion, it's clear that a major lure for the venturesome Depp was the chance to play a grotesque, to become a pestilent physical wreck with an artificial silver nose. There's more in that role for the actor, however, than there is for us.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Despite its title, the movie could hardly be less erotic. Indeed, promiscuity has never looked more totally unappealing, and its final scenes of Wilmot's advanced venereal disease are enough to make you take a vow of celibacy. A great date movie, this is not.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

What is most beguiling about The Libertine is that it allows Wilmot to self-destruct without ever giving us cause to care or relate.

San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin

There is little debauchery to be had in Laurence Dunmore's adaptation of The Libertine. In fact, hedonism has never looked so bleak.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The picture is an enormous disappointment... The result is one of the most self-consciously grimy movies on record - it looks as if the negative were developed in a mud bath.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The Libertine is such a torturous mess that it winds up doing something I hadn't thought possible: It renders Johnny Depp charmless.