George Hickenlooper's fact-based satire, starring Kevin Spacey and his ever-sharp comic timing, offers an antic version of the wheeler-dealer whose ambition and blinkered morality were close to caricature all along.

| Feb 7, 2018

The film has a complicated political story to tell, and its erratically suspenseful narrative often detracts from its central interest - what makes Abramoff tick.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 28, 2011

Casino Jack is really two movies: a convoluted tale about the exploits of disgraced Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, coupled with a zealous-if-misguided performance from Kevin Spacey in the title role.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2011

Spacey has fun doing Abramoff doing Al Pacino, President Ronald Reagan and Sylvester Stallone. But the typically strong Spacey isn't the only actor doing commanding work here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 7, 2011

It's hard to work up a whole lot of love or sympathy for convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 7, 2011

Casino Jack moves with such manic determination it all but reaches out from the screen and shakes you by the collar: "See, movies about lobbyists can be fun!"

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 7, 2011

Hickenlooper and co-conspirator Kevin Spacey are more successful at entertaining than informing or enraging us, but such a tart soufflé may be the best way for a fed-up public to digest this distasteful story.

| Jan 7, 2011

"Casino Jack" is a portrait of a player - a man always dancing, always spinning.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 6, 2011

"Casino Jack" is glib, fast-paced entertainment that barely leaves a mark - which, given the subject, is just plain wrong.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 6, 2011

Casino Jack is all over the place: exaggerated comedy, cartoonish high jinks, then heavy-handed melodrama...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 6, 2011

Kevin Spacey contributes a wonderfully flamboyant performance as Abramoff.

| Jan 3, 2011

It is Spacey's performance that contains most of the movie's mystery; although Abramoff's actions left little room for justification, in Spacey's performance, there is some.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 30, 2010

Tonally scattershot and more than a little heavy-footed. But then, so were the real cons from which Abramoff profited while the flimflam worked.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Dec 30, 2010

Spacey's portrayal of Abramoff gets at the man's contradictions - his ostensibly devout Jewish faith next to an almost sociopathic blindness to his misdeeds - but it never even partly explains them.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 22, 2010

It's a movie of sporadically entertaining scenes that add up to a vaguely unsatisfying whole.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 22, 2010

Sadly, Casino Jack just doesn't measure up to its own yardstick of success.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Dec 21, 2010

Kevin Spacey gives a bravura performance as superlobbyist Jack Abramoff in George Hickenlooper's uneven but often loopily entertaining Casino Jack.

| Original Score: B | Dec 21, 2010

Mr. Hickenlooper's oddly apolitical caper film loses itself in the puzzle of its protagonist's personality.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 17, 2010

Golden Globe nominee Kevin Spacey has a ball and then some playing the devil inside Jack Abramoff, the corrupt GOP lobbyist who ran wild during the W. years.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 17, 2010

Spacey has a field day as the hyper-energetic Abramoff, the former producer of the Dolph Lundgren epic "Red Scorpion" who observes that "Washington is Hollywood with ugly people."

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 17, 2010