The Reckoning: Critic Reviews

Dafoe makes Martin's role as head of the company as naturalistic as that of any contemporary SoHo creative director.

A talky, sententious affair.

A comparably lively wrap-up comes maybe 100 minutes in, which is mighty late for an already near-quaint drama to be getting its jump-start.

The Name of the Rose this ain't.

Carries too heavy a burden to succeed as the trifle it really is.

A listless avenger drama.

Emphatically acted, ponderous, and ultimately a little silly.

Has so many ideas working in it that they all but suffocate its thin plot.

An intriguing misfire, with heavy-handed direction threatening to obscure the efforts of a gifted cast.

The Reckoning has just a little too much of the whodunit and the thriller and not enough of the temper of its clash between cultures, but it works, maybe because the simplicity of the underlying plot is masked by the oddness of the characters.

The central conceit of 'let's save lives by putting on a play' seems not only artificial, but also hollow.

A suspenseless amateur-sleuth movie.

An ambitious, energetic and wholly satisfying movie about the dawn of dramatic and personal freedom and much more.

After a first hour slowed by exposition and a good deal of extraneous subplot development, the story catches fire in the second hour and keeps you engrossed.

Director McGuigan doesn't show much interest in tempo or character development, and the pace is numbing.

Has its flaws, among them a certain self-righteousness and a complicated storyline, but it is never less than gripping thanks to its gifted international cast.

Top-notch cinematography and set design that perfectly capture a hardscrabble medieval milieu, along with artful but sluggish direction by Paul McGuigan, make this a superficially faultless production that somehow lacks juice.

It's not Shakespeare in Love, and it really has no third act, but there's wonder in the scenes of theatrical invention, of theater being made up on the spot, a play in the making.

The fascinating issue of the secularization of theatre is reduced to mere whodunnit pretext.

Overstuffed and, in its own way, preachy.

Beneath the ill-fitting title lies an intriguing if flawed medieval murder mystery.

For its first hour or so, the story moves at a steady clip, generating enough mystery to keep you guessing and enough atmosphere to keep you interested.