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Mr. Untouchable
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    As interesting, certainly, as "American Gangster," and operating with a truer street sense of the characters involved.
  2. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    75
    It's not a pretty picture, but it sure is a compelling one.
  3. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    75
    What emerges is a portrait of a complex man - one who had no qualms about murder and drugs but who won a national poetry contest and read "Moby-Dick" while in jail. Go figure.
  4. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    75
    The "black Godfather" comes off as a cold-blooded narcissist whose vision of the American Dream is as twisted as it seems to have been rewarding.
  5. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    75
    If Barnes ultimately emerges as a heartless, duplicitous villain, he's nevertheless got the devil's slippery, seductive charm.
  6. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    70
    It's undeniably fascinating, but you might want to take a shower after hanging out with this unsavory bunch.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    70
    A fascinating first-person account of drug kingpin and ruthless gangster Nicky Barnes, whose outrageous story of rise, rule, rage, and revenge requires no such stylistic filler.
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    70
    A slick package all around. Adroitly edited, filled with fine music like Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and more people flashing needles than at a garment worker's convention, this film is less a dispassionate examination than a celebratory infomercial on its central character.
  9. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    70
    It's fast and furious, and it proves that crime doesn't pay, unless you know how to do it right.
  10. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    63
    Barnes, now in his seventies and relocated by the Witness Protection Program, is shot only in silhouette, but there's plenty of footage of him in his heyday, dressed to the pimpalicious nines and playing to the cameras like a movie star.
  11. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    60
    There is some acknowledgment of the terrible effects of the drug trade on residents of Harlem and other poor New York neighborhoods, but for the most part Mr. Untouchable clings to the standard hip-hop mythology of the pusher as entrepreneur, rebel, celebrity and folk hero.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: Robert Koehler
    50
    Alternately seduced and repelled by its subject, the garish and power-hungry Harlem gangster and '70s cocaine kingpin Nicky Barnes, Mr. Untouchable is one seriously confused documentary.
  13. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    Machiavelli epigrams and 70s soul classics embellish this slice of thug life, which succumbs to the usual hypocrisy of condemning Barnes while grooving on his cars, clothes, and jewels.
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