- 9
Made with daring and passion, it attempts the impossible and comes remarkably close to pulling it off. So close, in fact, that the skill and audacity used, the shock and awe of this highly entertaining attempt, are more significant than the imperfect results.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times
- 9
It's a remarkable film.
—Kirk Honeycutt Hollywood Reporter
- 9
...looks at an American war in a way almost no Hollywood movie ever has: We're not the heroes, but the dupes.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 8
...a breakneck tour of street-level mayhem and official deceit.
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 8
The pacing is mostly tense and smart; however, the movie's politics are distracting at best, and at worst may turn some viewers off completely.
—Luke Y. Thompson E!
- 7
...essentially another Jason Bourne thriller that entertainingly -- if sometimes uneasily -- mixes fact and speculation in a way that's already raised the ire of some on the right as well as on the left.
—Lou Lumenick New York Post
- 7
...generates immediate urgency by jumping headfirst into the fray, and the director's trademark imagery and in-your-face visuals intentionally keep us off guard.
—Sean O'Connell filmcritic.com
- 7
...expertly assembled...
—J. Hoberman LA Weekly
- 7
...works mainly because of the hardworking, always-believable Damon.
—J. Hoberman Village Voice
- 6
...unrelenting, but flawed...
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 6
...partly real and partly, increasingly, fantastic and outlandish in its wishful thinking.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 6
...a strangely dated, foolishly grandiose, simplistically angry fictional war-zone thriller about how one patriot blows the lid off America's missteps in Iraq.
—Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly
- 6
...a clunky assortment of hindsight-aided quotes and talking points masquerading as recent history. It's an important lesson, but Greengrass, against his nature, feels too inclined to spell it out for us.
—Scott Tobias Onion AV Club
- 6
...[director] Paul Greengrass' high-voltage action drama does a better job of defining where the U.S. went hopelessly wrong on Iraq than it does in creating a plausible suspense scenario.
—Todd McCarthy Variety
- 6
Expect hand-held cameras tracking Damon as he runs, fights and chases Bush-era bad guys.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 6
...offers itself up as more realistic, more hard-hitting, than the typical war movie. But Greengrass and his screenwriter Brian Helgeland, attempting to provide bigger action and louder ka-booms, engineer a series of increasingly improbable plot devices.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 2
...a laughably preposterous slam-bang military saga...
—Nick Schager Slant Magazine