Skolimowski succeeds in directing a minimalistic escape movie that enhances the physical performance of a wonderfully unrecognizable Vincent Gallo as the Taliban runaway [about] the many-sided taboo of Polish politics and the CIA’s covert operations.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023

Once [Jerzy] Skolimowski has established his story's visual momentum, it goes precisely nowhere.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 5, 2020

Tightly controlled by veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski and beautifully shot on location in Israel and Poland, Essential Killing is an exciting if wildly implausible fable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 5, 2020

Too often in cinema, "existential" serves as code for "boring." That would be a mistaken assumption about this film from Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 5, 2020

The chases and fights are mostly well done, but no one is going to confuse Essential Killing with a Renny Harlin thrill ride, and the 'action', such as it is, is exhausted in the first half of the film.

| Original Score: 4/10 | May 5, 2020

It's great screen acting, as [Vincent] Gallo expressively uses his body to make it part of the film's overall design.

| May 5, 2020

Essential Killing goes so far out of its way to avoid political commentary that the commentary that remains is slim, reduced to a familiar, though occasionally striking, statement on man's animal nature.

| Original Score: B- | May 5, 2020

The religious-themed inserts are incongruous in a project that so studiously sidesteps political markers and prove an unwanted distraction in the cinema.

| May 5, 2020

For all its allegorical heft, it never finally shucks off the impression that it is a well-made oddity.

| May 5, 2020

The violent perversity of some of the man's actions throws things off to an extent and, ultimately, [Jerzy] Skolimowski's bag of narrative tricks is not ample enough to fill out even the brief running time.

| May 5, 2020

It isn't as easy as I'd like with shoddy performances hurting the authenticity to make us want [Vincent] Gallo to laugh from the absurdity of it all instead of cower in fear, but we make due.

| Original Score: 6/10 | May 5, 2020

With the mesmeric Vincent Gallo at its swirling centre, and the stark cinematography of Adam Sikora driving its often blinding imagery, Essential Killing is a stunning film.

Full Review | May 5, 2020

Despite skillful assemblage, the script's plausibility issues increasingly undermine engagement, even with the generous argument that the pic is a parable and operates according to more poetic laws of realism.

| May 5, 2020

At times engrossing and not without palpable suspense, it nonetheless amounts to a provocative doodle.

| May 5, 2020

Vincent Gallo, who says not a single word in the film, invests the main character with deep-seated desperation in a performance that will win kudos.

| May 5, 2020

With "Essential Killing," [Jerzy] Skolimowski comes closer than ever before to a pure, elemental story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 5, 2020

Gallo is as inscrutable as ever, game to do such things as eating ants and let his piercing eyes do the acting, exuding a fearlessness that is the pulse of the film, even if it's absent a beating heart.

| Jan 9, 2019

Maybe the only failing of Essential Killing is that everything in it is seen so sufficiently that one doesn't feel the need to go back to watch it another time (unlike most great films, which improve on repeated viewings).

| Nov 14, 2017

Quite literally, Gallo is the only reason to see Essential Killing, and it's that which guarantees the film's blessedly quick fade from our ever more cluttered horizons.

| Nov 8, 2017

Skolimowski's fresh approach keeps us on guard.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 14, 2013