Musician-turned-filmmaker RZA and screenwriter Paul Cuschieri team up for a blistering takedown on post-Katrina FEMA relief work in New Orleans.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 23, 2022

This has a rich sense of place and an incredible cast of supporting actors.

| Sep 1, 2020

I do think that Shameik Moore does a lot to ground the emotions of this film... It's fun moment-to-moment and it has a strong sense of character, but the overall piece is a little bit messy.

| Sep 1, 2020

"Cut Throat City" is a more thoughtful and personal film, concerned with how systemic racism - and zoning ordinances - can kill more people than a gun.

| Aug 22, 2020

A film in nonstop conversation with movie history, American history, and itself.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 21, 2020

RZA tells this story (from a screenplay by Paul Cuschieri) with deliberation and imaginative daring. With "Cut Throat City," his third feature, he comes into his own as a director.

| Aug 20, 2020

An entertaining, if familiar ride.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 19, 2020

"Cut Throat City" ends on a note that's too clever by half, but that doesn't undercut all the vibrant, rough-edged, impressive storytelling that led to that moment.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 18, 2020

RZA's trenchant take on the synergistic interaction of poverty and greed gradually loses focus as it devolves into a familiar account of warring gangsters, corrupt politicians and a city struggling for redemption.

| Aug 18, 2020

Cut Throat City is still an ambitious and volatile film, an atmospheric survey of the thankless world of the rich and the damned.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 17, 2020

The film is a muddled social-protest thriller that tries to bridge the corrupt machinations upstairs with the desperation of the streets, and can't find a way to connect them convincingly.

| Aug 17, 2020

There is a shorter version of Cut Throat City - one that better blends conspiracy and violence - that would elevate RZA's film. In the end, the film, like the bank robbers it follows, leaves just a little too much money on the table.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 16, 2020