In the end, the screenplay is the letdown, hewing too closely to generic convention.

| Mar 24, 2020

Something you will have to seek out, but Michael Winterbottom is always worth seeking out.

| Jul 25, 2019

More than anything, this wiry thriller works as a homage to the neo-noir genre.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2019

Despite good performances and an interesting milieu, The Wedding Guest doesn't deliver as an exciting genre piece or thought-provoking drama. Michael Winterbottom is a master in many areas but the thriller seems beyond him this time.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 19, 2019

The performances are perfectly solid and it always runs smoothly, but the film itself seems to take its leave of us with a shrug.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 19, 2019

The Wedding Guest has all the right pieces there but fails to pull together into quite the finished product the high standards of its individual components suggest.

| Jun 23, 2019

Winterbottom's confident technique holds us for only half the running time of The Wedding Guest, a flimsy thriller about a tight-lipped lone wolf possibly named Jay.

| Mar 21, 2019

The film skirts classification as nimbly as it does pursuers, and in the process creates something that simmers on its own timetable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 21, 2019

Dev Patel is uncharacteristically icy and mournful as a hired kidnapper in "The Wedding Guest," but there's little in this flat thriller to warrant accepting its invitation.

| Original Score: C | Mar 15, 2019

The Wedding Guest feels quite invigorating: A genre work that honors the established conventions of neo-noir but adds diversity to the genre's trigger men and femme fatales.

| Mar 13, 2019

I did love that first half of the film something fierce, while Patel's performance is so stellar it makes me want to urge people to watch this independent effort in the theatre even with all of my reservations.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 13, 2019

"The Wedding Guest" is a thriller without thrills.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 12, 2019

Like the best noirs, "The Wedding Guest" is an efficient crime thriller that clocks in at around 90 minutes. It's a B movie with style - the stuff that dreams are made of.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 8, 2019

[A] satisfyingly unpredictable meditation on female agency, in a culture in which women are too often treated as a man's possession.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 6, 2019

[Winterbottom] has a great feeling for atmosphere, with lots of bustling street scenes and seedy hotel rooms, but it never translates to anything close to excitement.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 6, 2019

It's all quite gorgeous, and surprisingly moving. The Wedding Guest shows just how much you can do with a wisp of a story and a whole lot of cinematic vision.

| Mar 2, 2019

What's lacking is personality from the human characters, which is a serious failing...

| Mar 1, 2019

Guest barely bothers to meet the traditional wham-bam metrics of the genre. But as an intriguing, impressionistic wisp of a story, its mood and colors linger on the screen.

| Original Score: B | Mar 1, 2019

Patel, who also served as a producer on the film, may be looking into graduating from playing stock supporting characters and into more challenging lead roles. The Wedding Guest makes a very compelling case for a promotion.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 1, 2019

Nothing ever happens, and the two leads have the chemistry of olive oil and water.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 28, 2019