A less successful picture, mostly because it's more concerned with its winking meta-textual framework than the larger humanistic concerns of his other work.

| Nov 14, 2017

At times, the galloping absurdity drifts into off-the-peg comedy gangster cliché. But McDonagh's brilliant way with one-liners always claws back enough ground to stifle any groans.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2012

There's not much point to a meta-film once the actual film has ceased to grip.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2012

Self-aware stupidity does not equal wit.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 6, 2012

Clever, ludic, perky, perspicacious - and ever so slightly tiring.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2012

After a while the narrative falters, the ideas flag and it simply gets dull ...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2012

Hilarious, unwieldy, clever, snarky and snide it may be, but it's always entertaining.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2012

McDonagh is less saturated in film and pop culture than Tarantino and less prone than Kaufman to disappear down story wormholes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2012

Enormously entertaining, endlessly quotable, perfectly cast and packed full of the richest acting you'll see from an ensemble cast all year, but the result is ever so slightly hollow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2012

The film as a whole is fiercely funny; there are twists galore with some wonderful performances, especially from Rockwell and Walken whose scene-stealing skills are front and centre in this non-PC but thoroughly entertaining romp.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2012

The kind of messy, absurdist movie that can lift you out of a crappy mood-at least for a while.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2012

All this narrative nesting and genre-skipping sounds very cerebral on the page, but in practice, Seven Psychopaths is as pleasurably kinetic as can be, full of double-crosses and gunplay and sun-kissed SoCal locations.

| Oct 12, 2012

How do we suppress our need for moral and even physical justice if we believe that violence leads to damnation? Is there a chance to...oh, never mind. Let's just blow someone's brains out.

| Original Score: 3.5/5.0 | Oct 12, 2012

Each time it appears that McDonagh, who also directed, has written himself into a cul de sac, he off-roads the movie (sometimes literally) into fresh territory.

| Oct 12, 2012

Yes, it's a lot to keep track of, but writer-director Martin McDonagh does so with deft humor as the film hurls toward a desert climax, foreshadowed in one of Billy and Marty's exchanges.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 12, 2012

This is what Adaptation might've looked like had Charlie Kaufman been hired to pen a flippantly nihilistic wiseguy saga instead of an unfilmable ode to orchids.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2012

Seven Psychopaths isn't a great movie -- there are stretches where it has too much going on for its own good -- but it is an inspired, strange, and occasionally choke-on-your-popcorn funny ensemble piece.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 12, 2012

This flick never pretends to be anything but a bright hall of fun-house mirrors. And there, so gloriously distorted, gargoyles look right at home.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 12, 2012

While "Seven Psychopaths" is indeed as crazy as it sounds, it's not nearly as smart as it thinks it is.

| Original Score: C | Oct 12, 2012

Too many of its moments of let's-subvert-the-genre seem to leave McDonagh stranded and flailing at just the moment when a Tarantino movie or a Chuck Palahniuk novel is snapping into place.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 12, 2012