Critic Reviews

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  What is missing is any sort of psychological insight. Just what made Renato run? You won't find out here.

• Andy Webster, New York Times

  To borrow Robert Evans's famous quotation about "The Godfather," you can smell the spaghetti, but less sauce might have helped.

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  Gangster clichés fly like submachine gun bullets in the Italian crime biopic "Angel of Evil," a restless and hollow rundown of '70s criminal Renato Vallanzasca.

• Tom Keogh, Seattle Times

  As a tale of squabbling gangsters and prison intrigues, "Angel of Evil" is ordinary.

• Ernest Hardy, Village Voice

  You can all but feel the checklist being marked off, and the viewer is never really drawn into the world or made to care what's happening.

• David Jenkins, Time Out

  Terrible orch-rock soundtrack aside, it makes for an engrossing if hollow romp.

• Jeff Meyers, Metro Times (Detroit, MI)

  Not to indulge in cliché, but given that Rossi Stuart penned the script with five other writers, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that so many cooks created a meal that's all sauce and no spaghetti.

• Alistair Harkness, Scotsman

  The film, like all gangster movies, gets off on glamour and guns, which initially makes it a thrill to watch...

• Philip French, Guardian [UK]

  Surprisingly poor on the larger social context.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  It's a bit of a plod, violent and overlong, from which we learn only this: even the Italians dressed badly in the 1970s.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  If it falls short of either Gomorrah or A Prophet, it is an above average prison thriller, telling us of a strange man who fought most of his enemies to a standstill until he died.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  Cmpetently made, but after Mesrine, the recent Carlos The Jackal film and the Mafiathemed Gomorrah, this is one sub-genre that's fast reaching saturation point.

• Christopher Tookey, Daily Mail [UK]

  The main reason to see this is a charismatic leading performance by Kim Rossi Stuart. Even so, it makes two hours feel like four.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  None of it's bad: but it leaves unanswered the question of why exactly we should care about this guy.

• David Gritten, Daily Telegraph

  Angels of Evil is just one damned thing after another.

• Claire Oakley, Little White Lies

  This film works as a straight up guns-and-money flick, but its clichés fail to involve us in the myth that is the Angel of Evil.

• Sophie Ivan, Film4

  Unlikely to reshape the canon but an entertaining enough retro Italian gangster romp.

• Damon Wise, Radio Times

  Rising Italian star Kim Rossi Stuart is the standout in this fast-paced biography of Milanese gangster Renato Vallanzasca, who fancied himself as something of a Robin Hood figure in the mid-1970s.

• Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

  There are a few too many characters to keep straight, and some irrelevant sideroads, but it's a gripping ride

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Engaging, energetic gangster thriller-slash-biopic with a charismatic central performance from Kim Rossi Stuart, though the pacy direction means that the film is often frustratingly light on context and detail.

Read all 20 critic reviews