Empire

Entertainment Weekly Bruce Fretts

Leguizamo owns Empire, the first film to capture the live-wire crackle of his one-man stage shows -- He's front and center in nearly every scene, and he holds the screen with a simmering self-assurance.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

In regard to Franc. Reyes' engrossing and utterly uncompromising Empire let it be said right at the top that the protean John Leguizamo, last seen as Toulouse-Lautrec in "Moulin Rouge," gives one of the best performances of the year in a lead role in an American movie.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

Reyes' fast-paced tale soars on the pedigree of its cast, all of whom are clearly having a ball -- Both poignant and wickedly amusing, Empire sets high standards for a subgenre that's rarely had any.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A gangster movie with the capacity to surprise. People do unexpected things and for reasons we wouldn't anticipate.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Empire, with its double-barreled shoot-outs, its predictable carnage and conflict, and a rush-job of a resolution, is ultimately just one more urban gangland genre flick.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Comes so close to working that you can see there from here. It has the right approach and the right opening premise, but it lacks the zest and it goes for a plot twist instead of trusting the material.

Film Threat Chris Gore

Empire is an entertaining, colorful, action-filled crime story with an intimate heart.

Variety Joe Leydon

Choreographer-turned-filmmaker Franc. Reyes covers familiar ground without stumbling or dazzling.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Rossellini doesn't do much more than show up and be a hundred kinds of ravishing. Yet there's a movie in her ageless face and that untamed bouffant.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Stereotypical, banally written bloodbath.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Panders to its audience by glorifying drug dealing and violence in all-too-depressingly familiar ways.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

While Reyes seeks his own ambitious style, he can't quite step out from under De Palma's shadow and thematic choices. Everything from the voiceover narration to the final frame in Empire looks and feels like a low-budget hybrid of "Scarface" or "Carlito's Way."

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Like its protagonist, the movie tries to rise above convention, flails about a bit, and slides back into self-parody.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Watching John Leguizamo labor to keep this leaky vessel afloat, I was reminded of all those Hell's Kitchen melodramas James Cagney rescued in the early 30s.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This tale has been told and retold; the races and rackets change, but the song remains the same.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

This is clearly the Worst Performance by an Actress in a Death Scene since Sofia Coppola took a bullet for her dad in "The Godfather: Part III."

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

I know Empire is supposed to be a movie, but for a while, I thought I was listening to one of those talking books.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Empire is just too intent on living up to its imperial name -- colonizing other defenceless movies, plundering their rich natural resources, and leaving us all to feel rather cruelly violated. A postscript: Somebody here -- I'm not saying who -- dies. And still keeps on talking.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's deeply ordinary, depressingly shabby stuff.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A retread of material already thoroughly plumbed by Martin Scorsese.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Empire devolves into a bloody revenge thriller with an ending as primitive as its opening is convoluted.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Life in the Bronx is hard, all right. Getting through a movie shouldn't be harder.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Witless, unoriginal mishmash of gangsta-drama clichés.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

Too bad the central bedfellowship never gels, and Franc. Reyes's script turns a dissection of ambition into "Sleeping With the Enemy"-style nonsense.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Universal Pictures has a lot of gall to pick up a movie as thoroughly awful as Empire and -- with a straight face and a $20 million or so ad campaign -- thrust it on the holiday movie market as if it were a significant piece of filmmaking.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Doesn't deserve the energy it takes to describe how bad it is.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Serves a reheated notion on a creaky TV tray.