| 80 |
New Times (L.A.)
Andy Klein
This nearly perfect confection never takes its action more seriously than its comedy.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
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.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
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.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Enjoyable action comedy from the Clint Eastwood mold, though the comic elements are more fun than the action.
|
| 60 |
LA Weekly
Paul Malcolm
The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.
|
| 60 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Noel Murray
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.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Laura Sinagra
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.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
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.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Lisa Nesselson
An acceptably entertaining but borderline bland vehicle for Jean Reno.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Jonathan Curiel
A silly, cross-cultural shoot-'em-up -- the sort of movie that will work for those with some time to kill (no pun intended).
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
At least Reno is around -- and he's the only spice in this stale, slick stew
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
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.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
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.
|
| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
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.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
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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