| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
As the film, with its haunting score and inspired use of popular music, builds flawlessly to its resounding conclusion, it is accompanied by a pitch-dark humor that grows out of the sheer absurdity of the city's daily body count.
|
| 90 |
Rolling Stone
Setting it against the backdrop of a wanton city under siege, Schroeder crafts a film of whiplash urgency.
|
| 90 |
New Times (L.A.)
One of the most genuinely shocking films you'll ever see.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
It's sad, funny, shocking and completely unlike any movie in a dozen years.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
A scathing, darkly funny political essay wrapped inside a tragic love story (or vice versa).
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Plays like a dislocated version of ''Death in Venice,'' but in a dryer, higher climate that features exponentially more firepower.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
In a film overstuffed with tragedy, the most painful one might be the gradual transformation of Fernando's moral and intellectual indignation into a weary, cynical detachment.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The film's title is appropriate. A desperate Catholicism flavors the doomed city.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
By the end of the movie, the characters are numbed, while the audience is sensitized to the mayhem to an almost unbearable degree.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
The grimness of the movie becomes not only too unbearable, its point is clear about halfway through. After that, everything comes across as redundant retreading of the same perspective. But for atmosphere, great cinematography and eye-opening directness, this movie can't be beat.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Mark Peranson
Has its faults, but it's Barbet Schroeder's most relevant and interesting film in over a decade.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Couldn't have succeeded had it been cast with movie stars. Its authenticity derives not only from the streets on which it was filmed but also from its able Colombian cast.
|
| 80 |
Variety
Schroeder's first non-American film in 16 years feels like a rejuvenation; his adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's 1994 novel has a naturalistic freedom and ease that is both refreshing and direct in the way it tells a deeply disturbing story.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
A bracing ode to the city -- a place of aching beauty and poverty, encompassed by a disconcerting halo of ancient culture and modern nihilism.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Patrick Z. McGavin
The director's return home here parallels that of Fernando, metaphorically and artistically. Our Lady of the Assassins is a film of clarity, feeling and electric intensity.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
An utterly nihilistic, harrowingly upsetting vision of hell on earth.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A marvelous film.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Rough, breathless adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's ferociously sardonic novel.
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
The performances can be stiff, but a kinetic mix of anxiety, dread, and numbed resignation is always palpable.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
The movie itself IS dull, however. The characters never engage our interest, and the relentless violence grows monotonous.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
The blend of chic histrionics and ultra-bright daylight imagery make much of the movie resemble a network soap opera with an on-location interlude. It looks as cheap as life is held in Medellin.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Flat dialogue and stiff performances (especially by the street kids, like Ballesteros, turned into actors by Schroeder) don't help.
|
| 50 |
Time
Full of sacrilegious rant, absurdist affectlessness and pop social criticism, this film plays like an old B movie: narratively improvisational, delusionally pretentious, weirdly watchable.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
The intimate love story is overwhelmed by the carnage. It may be an accurate picture of life in Medellin, but it's not convincing.
|
| 40 |
Mr. Showbiz
Far from creating a pungent portrait of a society gone mad with blood and greed, Schroeder's movie strives for political points while it's whiffing on simplicities like character, motivation, and believability.
|
