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63Deadfall suffers most obviously from a sense of not being adequately developed.
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50There isn't much to the characters in this morose thriller.
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38There's nothing you haven't seen before - and better - in Deadfall, which would seem to appeal mostly to fans of snowmobile chases.
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38Wilde is stuck with the harder job of simultaneously playing sexy, innocent, conniving, and heartsore, and the effort appears to give her a headache. "This is kind of like an old movie," Liza says to Jay in one scene. Lady, don't you wish.
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90It's a tight, taut, expertly crafted thriller from a director to watch.
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70A diverting neo-noir, Deadfall brings to mind those dark, old-fashioned entertainments in rotation on Turner Classic Movies that suck you in with their genre machinery, sullen beauties and despair.
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40If Deadfall had more life, it might have been about more than just its wannabe edge. Ruzowitzky, whose 2007 film "The Counterfeiters" won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, understands the movie's simple plan. But it nonetheless puts us into a big sleep.
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75There's a powerfully creepy sensibility to Deadfall. But the way it handles the messiness of families -- a universal message given vivid metaphorical life in the blood and guts it leaves in its path -- is finally rewarding.
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50Deadfall, though, is a thing of pieces: splendidly efficient in its action sequences (car crash, knife fight, snowmobile chase), dawdling in dialogue scenes that should smolder with tension.
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42The best parts of Deadfall are absorbed into a scenario that frequently ditches the cat-and-mouse routine and tries instead to be about three dysfunctional families working toward reconciliation.
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40Some of the language is smart, sinister and ironic in just the right ways, particularly when Addison, Eric Bana's serial-killing mastermind, delivers it. In other cases, the dialogue is so ludicrously off - either unnecessary, or unnecessarily misogynistic if a cop is doing the talking - that it's hard to believe the same person wrote it.
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83A bonafide family drama, proof that the noir has humanistic roots. It left me feeling thankful for persistent movie traditions.
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75Deadfall is an above-average genre piece with a terrific cast that builds to a bloody Thanksgiving dinner shoot-out I found pretty close to unforgettable.
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50Despite a super-dark noir plot and respectable cast, Deadfall is a thriller that never quite delivers on its promise.
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55The movie's violence, although gruesome, flirts with slapstick, and the story appears bound for domestic comedy when all the major characters sit down for Thanksgiving dinner at June and Chet's grand Victorian farmhouse. But the meal becomes more freak show than satire.
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75Bana ("Munich") makes an effective bad guy. Hunnam portrays Jay as a hero worth rooting for. And Wilde turns in a nuanced performance as a woman in conflict with herself.
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80A highly satisfying Western-cum-noir in the old tradition, Deadfall is alive in ways that are all too rare among American movies.
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25Watching Deadfall really is like being trapped in a blizzard – the cinematography is so muddy you can barely make out what's going on on screen (besides the bright splashes of blood) – you're antsy to be anywhere else but where you are.
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Dec 6, 201250Solid performances from veterans Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson as Jay's parents, and Treat Williams as the sheriff, anchor the older generation, but the characters do tend to conform to stereotypes of hard, unforgiving men and loving, patient women.
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Dec 4, 201250There are hints of a fun, trashy film beneath the surface, but that film is always subservient to the dull one Dean and Ruzowitzky were more comfortable making.
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Dec 4, 201220Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) may be an occasionally interesting visual stylist, but storytelling-wise, his second English-language effort couldn't be more stillborn.
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Nov 28, 201270Tonally, Deadfall seems to be aiming somewhere between Sam Raimi's "A Simple Plan" and the brilliant Pine Barrens episode of "The Sopranos," with a classic Western showdown at its climax. But the pedestrian writing holds it back.
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Nov 28, 201238None of Eric Bana's mildly rousing moments clearly rise above the laborious gobbledygook that Ruzowitzky builds up through the course of the film's 94-minute duration.
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Nov 28, 201220A crime saga cobbled together from scraps of genre predecessors, Deadfall's unbelievable silliness escalates at every turn.