“As glum and mechanical as its predecessor was buoyant, ditching the space exploration for a joyless, been-there-done-that revenge plot. The charming supporting cast is sidelined, and Michael Giacchino’s rousing score can only feign excitement for so long. This sorry sequel feels rote and hopelessly derivative, timidly going where we all have already gone before.” – Metro, 05/14/2013
“Revolutionaries become paper-pushers in an office somewhere, old friends lose touch. It is a film about fading out, about how youthful passions dissolve. The day-to-day business of living so often saps us of our resolve, and even the most ardent convictions wither away over time.” – The Improper Bostonian, 05/08/2013
“It’s terribly difficult to spend an entire movie with Shannon’s Kuklinski. Gruff, emotionally constipated and remote, he’s an alienating presence and Vroman’s film aspires to no insight besides the fact that he killed lots of people. The chintzy musical score and dingy cinematography give The Iceman a cheap, direct to video feel. It’s a low-rent movie with an expensive cast.” – Metro, 05/03/2013
“Here is a movie so relentlessly toxic some early champions are assuming it must be satirical. That’s a big assumption. Bay is still a hateful, misogynist cretin, content with slapdash slapstick jokes at the expense of the infirm, foreigners, fat people and gays. All the slo-mo hero worship of our floundering kidnappers clangs against their grisly incompetence.” – Metro, 04/26/2013
“It’s about this very abusive character, and I think people just felt abused at the end. They felt yelled at and made fun of, and people around the movie had a hard time separating the fiction and the character in the movie from reality. So it all got mixed up, and in some ways that was the film’s greatest achievement.” – The Improper Bostonian, 04/24/2013
“Pitched somewhere near the somber worst-case scenarios of a driver’s education training film, it’s Reefer Madness with smartphones. For most sane, well-adjusted folks, using the Internet is just a fact of life, not a cause for garment-rending hysteria. Millions of people communicate online every day; it’s really not the end of the world, dude.” – The Improper Bostonian, 04/10/2013
“We didn’t have a script. We didn’t know what it was. You don’t know where you fit into this. And it was about learning to let go. You know what I mean? For better or for worse, you throw out everything you know and just jump off the thing and see what happens. There are things I love about the movie, and there are things I still don’t understand.” – BOFCA, 04/09/2013
“Gosling once again proves he’s the most captivatingly mannered actor around, half-smirking his way through a baby-faced Steve McQueen riff and toying with props as if they’re strange, foreign objects he just discovered. Derek Cianfrance could probably be a great filmmaker, if he wasn’t trying so hard to be a Great Filmmaker.” – The Improper Bostonian, 03/27/2013
“No isn’t a picture about believing in a leader or a platform. It’s about believing in a brand. As with Lincoln, this is a movie about pragmatism, where the ends justify the means, and sometimes you have to sacrifice your ideals and fudge the rules a bit for the greater good — especially because the people casting votes are generally stupid.” – The Improper Bostonian, 03/13/2013
“Long gone is our hero’s then-unprecedented vulnerability. Willis now has more superpowers than all of The Avengers put together. He’s an arrogant, swaggering bulletproof tool barging into situations with guns blazing, never breaking a sweat. When did John McClane become such a dick?” – The Improper Bostonian, 02/27/2013
