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Wasabi
Metascore
53 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 15
  3. Negative: 1 out of 15
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  1. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    80
    This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.
    All this critic's reviews
  2. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    75
    Like a Hollywood buddy-cop movie gone through a multi-culti blender. It holds up a funhouse mirror to that familiar scenario in which a maverick cop breaks the rules.
  3. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    75
    The spaniel-eyed Jean Reno ("Ronin") infuses Hubert with a mixture of deadpan cool, wry humor and just the measure of tenderness required to give this comic slugfest some heart.
  4. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Enjoyable action comedy from the Clint Eastwood mold, though the comic elements are more fun than the action.
  5. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Paul Malcolm
    60
    The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.
  6. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    60
    Offers watchable light entertainment, even though the prospect of the most respected national cinema indulging clunky cop-movie stereotypes is, if not scandalous, then at least disappointing.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Laura Sinagra
    60
    The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep.
  8. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    58
    Does its job colorfully and entertainingly, as long as you don't lean too hard on such niggling details as logic, legality and the laws of physics.
  9. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    50
    At least Reno is around -- and he's the only spice in this stale, slick stew
  10. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Curiel
    50
    A silly, cross-cultural shoot-'em-up -- the sort of movie that will work for those with some time to kill (no pun intended).
  11. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Driven by sheer enthusiam (much of it for the worst excesses of Hollywood filmmaking), which makes it fun to watch in spite of its fundamental ridiculousness.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: Lisa Nesselson
    50
    An acceptably entertaining but borderline bland vehicle for Jean Reno.
  13. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    40
    Wasabi dawdles and drags when it should pop; it doesn't even have the virtue of enough mindless violence to break up the tedium of all its generational bonding.
  14. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    40
    Culinary purists have observed that much of what passes for the spicy Japanese condiment wasabi at American restaurants is an ersatz concoction of horseradish and green food coloring. The French-language action comedy Wasabi is just as artificial, pumped with horseradish to give it heat in lieu of actual spice.
  15. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    38
    It is a thriller trapped inside a pop comedy set in Japan, and gives Reno a chirpy young co-star who bounces around him like a puppy on visiting day at the drunk tank.
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