Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
A white-savior showbiz fable of a particularly dubious and retrograde variety.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Quite possibly [Murray's] worst movie ever.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
An acclaimed film director, a legendary comic actor, lots of fun rock and pop songs, and a noble story at its core can't save "Rock the Kasbah" from being one hugely misguided dud.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A lot of the actor's usual mercurial charm isn't used to full effect and is actually tempered when it doesn't feel like it should be.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Rock the Kasbah's timing is so slack, and its screenplay so shapeless, that the movie doesn't even rise to the level of an Afghan-war Stripes. It's almost as laugh-free as the latest news from Kunduz.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This dismal comedy, scripted by Murray's old pal Mitch Glazer (Scrooged), evinces only enough interest in Afghanis to keep the story rolling.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Your enjoyment of all this will probably depend heavily on your willingness to let the words romp and Taliban coexist for approximately two hours.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An ongoing war is no setting for a musical comedy, especially one this glib and inane.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Rock the Kasbah goes fierce to quietly touching and back to funny again.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
For every moment of desert beauty, or insight into the twilight economies that flourish in a war zone, there's a key scene that appears truncated or even missing.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Rock the Kasbah morphs into a pretty implausible feel-good movie that's nearly as maudlin as it is unconvincing.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Levinson never seems to know what to point his camera at, or when to cut, and Glazer never seems to know when to leave a joke alone and let the cast work.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : TIME Magazine
Its music-industry gags sit awkwardly next to war-zone jokes and cultural quips, landing all involved on a peace train to nowhere.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Murray, idiosyncratic as always, dominates, but his performance can't save this misconceived mess.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Rock the Kasbah" is the mausoleum where comedy was buried.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
As one-liner after one-liner misses its mark, you begin to feel sorry for Murray, who's really too old to be playing a guy who has a little daughter . and likes to get kinky with Kate Hudson as a raucous, Dolly Parton-style hooker-businesswoman.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
A comedy that's openly afraid to seem too sincere or too mawkish, and doesn't fully commit either to its comedy or its uplift. Like Murray, it's wry and presented largely in air quotes, with an accompanying eye-roll.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Bill Murray heads to Afghanistan in director Barry Levinson's dreadfully misguided farce.

Name : Natalie Daher / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It fumbles a bit by prioritizing the goofy antics of its white cast over what turns out to be a smart depiction of non-Western life.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It needs a smarter script. It needs at least two or three perfectly engineered, joke-after-joke sequences. It needs a smart director - did you really do "Wag the Dog," Levinson? - whose idea of political satire goes beyond freshman-year sarcasm.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Cliched, enervating, insulting - it's tough to settle on a single pejorative for "Rock the Kasbah," though abysmal might do.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
If it were any worse, they'd be screening it as evidence at The Hague.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's a movie that's half-over before it tells us what it's really about.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Rock the Kasbah, does not rock at all - not even a little bit.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Bill Murray is Bill Murray is Bill Murray in a comedy that's little more than a schtick delivery system with some third-act personal growth thrown in for good measure.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Not Murray's best and not Levinson's either.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
The movie wants to be both glib and emotionally resonant, but it can't seem to figure out what the stakes are - even as people are getting shot.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This movie is all over the place.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Some projects are just too misguided for the star to mug and shrug his way out of. Consider Rock the Kasbah at the top, or the bottom, of that list.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Murray does his best to hold up the movie, but there's only so much he can do. Ultimately, his latest fish out of water never makes it back upstream.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
There might be a decent movie in here somewhere, if the focus had been on the right character.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
I'm as susceptible as any other deskbound, conflict-averse fantasist to the visceral appeal of a good gangster movie. But "Black Mass" isn't one.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A crime drama that creeps and drips blood like a horror movie, and in many respects it is.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Black Mass struggles to find something new to say about organized crime and the loyalty between men. But the only thing the film manages to do is remind us we've seen all this stuff done before, and done better.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This is a good, solid, well-executed crime story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Whenever Depp is on screen, nothing else matters.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
"Black Mass" is a riveting character study and might land Depp an Oscar nomination, even if the film itself is not very ambitious.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is the sort of movie Sidney Lumet might have made in his prime - intelligently written, handsomely mounted, and loaded with top actors.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
In scene after scene, some fine actors go to town and dive into the material gratefully.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Black Mass" isn't pretty, but it certainly is strong.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
For Black Mass, Johnny Depp has dusted off his A-game, which has lain dormant for far too long.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
If there's a problem with Black Mass, it's that the general arc of the story is well known.its details reflect the plot points of many other gangster films. But it's the getting there that's the thrill.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
It's absolutely chilling to watch Depp. With bad teeth and a head of dramatically receding hair, the actor somewhat resembles Jack Nicholson in The Departed but deftly avoids caricature as he grows more sinister with every murder.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Johnny Depp does career-best work as notorious Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger in Scott Cooper's taut, elegantly understated crime drama.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
[Depp] holds the screen as pure malevolence.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
With all the talent on board here, expectations go beyond creepiness; unfortunately creepiness is about as far as the movie ultimately goes.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Black Mass, a down and dirty crime drama based on the exploits of Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, is thrilling for a number of reasons.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
Propelled by a raw and primal performance by Johnny Depp, Scott Cooper's Black Mass will have you barricading your doors and hiding under the bed after seeing this corrosive gangster film.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
How much longer must we subscribe, as moviegoers, to the sentimental brotherhood of violence?

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The acting in "Black Mass" is tremendous.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Black Mass is a tightly wound piece of work, and Cooper keeps its many small parts moving with ease.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
While there's nothing totally new here, Black Mass works the tropes extremely well and sets the scene early in the mean streets of 1970s South Boston.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Depp's brutal antihero is the highlight of this compelling if somewhat familiar gangster movie.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's as if the spirit of a psychopath like Bulger resists the camera. Or maybe the movie isn't imaginative enough to penetrate his shell.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A bleak, claustrophobic based-on-fact film that draws us completely into a dark world of crime and complicity.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
You forgive the zigs, zags, evasions and subplots for the hardcore power of Depp's performance and the film's portrait of moral rot on both sides of the law.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
The role is Depp's best in many years, and a welcome respite from the parade of prancing pseudo-villains-Mortdecai, the Wolf, Barnabas Collins, Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka-to which he has devoted far too much of his career.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Black Mass" is the sort of gangland film you would call run of the mill, if only it dashed faster.

Name : Peter Hartlaub / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Black Mass" is a solid piece of filmmaking, from subtle beginning to the excessive end.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Welcome back to the real world, Mr. Depp.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
It's one of those movies that you don't exactly enjoy (so many guns, so many deaths), but you appreciate for its craft and tension, and for its cast's willingness to lose themselves in the darkness.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Depp shines in a solid gangster biopic.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The acting here is much stronger and more soulful than I would have expected, and not only from Depp.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
What "Black Mass" gains in moral honesty, it loses in dramatic momentum. Even filmmakers and actors as fine as these haven't managed to solve one of cinema's most enduring challenges - making criminals interesting without exalting them.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie's good enough that you should see it if you want to. But you don't have to, and, in these parts, that matters.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
This is Depp bringing his skills to the table as a man with a propensity for being both terrifying and charming, often switching between the two on a dime.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's a very good film about a very bad man. But as well-crafted and well-acted as it is, it never rises to greatness because we've been watching this story in one way or another going back to the time of Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Johnny Depp is more engaging than he's been in years, even if his performance can feel a little restricted and one-note.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Depp's performance as Bulger is as strong, and as energized, as anything he's done on screen for years.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Black Mass isn't The Departed, and it's a bit too black and white. But movie mobster fans can relax, cause the movie doesn't need to have a hit taken out on it.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Black Mass more or less limits itself to procedural status. Within those aims, it's a pretty good one, absorbing and well-made.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
There are moments of icy violence, and some great lived-in faces among the characters. But this is no "Goodfellas." It's just another punk, talking tough.