Our Lady of the Assassins

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Setting it against the backdrop of a wanton city under siege, Schroeder crafts a film of whiplash urgency.

New Times (L.A.) David Ehrenstein

One of the most genuinely shocking films you'll ever see.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's sad, funny, shocking and completely unlike any movie in a dozen years.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

A scathing, darkly funny political essay wrapped inside a tragic love story (or vice versa).

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Plays like a dislocated version of ''Death in Venice,'' but in a dryer, higher climate that features exponentially more firepower.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film's title is appropriate. A desperate Catholicism flavors the doomed city.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

By the end of the movie, the characters are numbed, while the audience is sensitized to the mayhem to an almost unbearable degree.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

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.

Chicago Reader Mark Peranson

Has its faults, but it's Barbet Schroeder's most relevant and interesting film in over a decade.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A bracing ode to the city -- a place of aching beauty and poverty, encompassed by a disconcerting halo of ancient culture and modern nihilism.

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

An utterly nihilistic, harrowingly upsetting vision of hell on earth.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A marvelous film.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Rough, breathless adaptation of Fernando Vallejo's ferociously sardonic novel.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The performances can be stiff, but a kinetic mix of anxiety, dread, and numbed resignation is always palpable.

USA Today Mike Clark

The movie itself IS dull, however. The characters never engage our interest, and the relentless violence grows monotonous.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

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.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Flat dialogue and stiff performances (especially by the street kids, like Ballesteros, turned into actors by Schroeder) don't help.

Time Richard Schickel

Full of sacrilegious rant, absurdist affectlessness and pop social criticism, this film plays like an old B movie: narratively improvisational, delusionally pretentious, weirdly watchable.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The intimate love story is overwhelmed by the carnage. It may be an accurate picture of life in Medellin, but it's not convincing.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

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.