Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A fairly ambitious picture tailor-made for that slice of the Christian audience accustomed to the tropes and beats of prestige cable dramas.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Risen is more entertaining than Bible-adjacent stories are usually allowed to be.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Whether or not it triggers a craze for divinely inspired detective stories, "Risen" makes a decent case for itself as the "Columbo" of the genre: It's amiable, creaky and not remotely predicated on the element of surprise.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
A low-IQ affair that supposes that the Gospels will sound more convincing if seen through the eyes of a skeptic. Instead, it seeks to improve the New Testament by putting a layer of Naugahyde upholstery on it.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Risen" was never meant as anything but a tool for the converted. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
It's not often that faith-based films, competing in the same marketplace that rewards action, embrace the deeper, more difficult idea of meeting hate with love, but Risen tries.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
The film ends up falling into a loop of abortive climaxes, set against an indistinguishable beige-gray backdrop of limestone, before the inevitable cheap-looking flash of CGI light in a scraggly field.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
For a film that could have easily become bogged down in Sunday School reverence, or culture-war opportunism, Risen presents an intriguing, oblique approach to a Bible movie.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
We know how it turns out, but seeing from the point of view of someone who doesn't know and doesn't believe adds more cogency.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
If you drink every time you're reminded of Monty Python's 1979 Judean jaunt, "Life of Brian," you might just make it through to the end.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Viewers already well-versed in the greatest story ever told might find their interest piqued by the filmmakers' unconventional take. It's unlikely, however, that "Risen" will preach to anyone outside the choir.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's not especially challenging. But it is several steps up from some faith-based fare, and it will doubtless appeal to its target audience.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : Village Voice
Despite not doing much more than preach to the choir, Risen is still more nuanced than the lion's share of recent faith-based dramas.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Whatever your religious affiliation, you will come away thinking that if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's nice to finally see the Messiah portrayed by somebody who'd probably get extra attention at a U.S. airport by Homeland Security.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Fiennes sticks with the brooding, stoic performance, even when Clavius is undergoing some major changes. It's not his best work.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It's intended primarily for an audience of Christian believers, but genuine drama precedes the preaching.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
The film features a lush historical setting and some satisfying action scenes, but the dialogue is often laughable, a mix of the pseudo-archaic with oddly contemporary lingo.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Reynolds' gets many things right: the blasted look of the desert, the dusty provincial look of a far-flung Roman outpost. And the story he tells is both serious and modest.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
It's pointed about how we treat today's zealots, as when Clavius likens the pain of crucification to "sucking air through a wet cloth" - a description of waterboarding.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Fiennes is superb, portraying a man slowly transformed by events that shake his beliefs about the world and his place in it to their core.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Risen" is a fascinating cultural artifact, but as a film, it's destined for no glory greater than as an appropriate cable rerun on Easter.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
What a good surprise it was to watch a biblical feature less preachy, less stuffy and more entertaining than most. "Risen" is an original crime-fiction take on a story as old as stories get.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Most of the time, the banter doesn't sound like banter; the movie shares Sasha and Paige's unforced shorthand.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out New York
Limited by the same arch tone and flippant jokes that suffocate every other low-budget indie about Gen Y confronting adulthood.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"A waxen falseness suffuses the stilted, stubbornly generic picture. Like the fast-food mozzarella sticks one of the characters devours in moments of existential woe, it feels like a calculated imitation rather than the real thing."

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Fogel's focus is female friendship, and the challenges presented by growing older and pairing up. It all makes for a rocky road, regardless of the romantic rival's gender.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Meester and Jacobs have an easy, authentic chemistry, but there isn't enough structure or storytelling thrust to sustain interest in the plot: Triumphs, calamities and reunions keep happening, but none contains real dramatic heft.

Name : Ronnie Scheib / Alias : Variety
A well-scripted, intriguingly-acted effort to mine the theme of prolonged adolescent best-buddyism through two women.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Fogel refuses to pander by pretending that the girls can fix everything with a hug. Sacrifices must be made.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The two stars display a winning chemistry in this amusingly observant study of female friendship.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The charming story about millennial confusion is deftly written by Susanna Fogel (who also directs) and Joni Lefkowitz, and the dialog actually sounds like the way a pair of smart and funny twentysomethings might really talk.

Name : Alex Pappademas / Alias : Grantland
It's the first time I've watched a David Gordon Green movie and found myself wishing I was in the capable hands of a set-'em-up-knock-'em-down director like Jay Roach.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
The film becomes a Sandra Bullock vehicle, and while it's buoyed by her typical comic aplomb, it loses sight of the bigger picture.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
The most important aspects of this striking story have been scrubbed away or laundered into Hollywood-style pseudo-psychological neutrality.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Like the politicians and political consultants it mocks, "Our Brand Is Crisis" doesn't completely deliver on what it promises.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The movie wafts and drones and shifts gears so many times that it is never as funny, pointed, jaundiced or clever as it could have been, and much less politically significant than it should be.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
The movie unfortunately gets stuck between edgy drama and broad comedy, and most of the humor lands with a thud, unless animals getting run over or an A-list actress mooning bus passengers get your vote.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Like the ruthless political strategists the film both satirizes and celebrates, Our Brand Is Crisis speaks out of both sides of its mouth.

Name : John Semley / Alias : Globe and Mail
Say what you will about the sneering, misanthropic political dramas of previous eras (Blow Out, JFK and so on). But at least they came by their cynicism in good faith.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
It's a case study, if nothing else, of starting with a dubious idea and making it downright awful.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
David Gordon Green's latest unpredictable addition to his resume is offbeat and appealing on some levels but is neither as funny nor as trenchant as it might have been.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
[Bullock] has the knack of playing someone who is seriously flawed, yet still appealing for her smarts, her broken heart and her sharp wit.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
[Bullock's] role as a weary Machiavelli in sunglasses and trench coat gives her little to work with but a stream of jaded one-liners.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
For a movie about political messaging, Our Brand Is Crisis doesn't know what it's selling besides Sandra Bullock's lusciously buttery dye job.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
If it's satire, it's neither sharp nor especially funny. Yet it doesn't deliver emotionally, either.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Green and company put an artificial ceiling on the pic's satirical potential. Had they fictionalized the country, "Crisis" could have joined the ranks of "Duck Soup" or "The Mouse That Roared."

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
The overriding message, which certainly isn't new, is that power corrupts and politics is a nasty game not meant for the little people. But in "Crisis," the point is not powerfully made.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
"Crisis" squanders its intriguing premise.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
An excellent supporting cast includes Anthony Mackie and the terrific Ann Dowd as fellow consultants. Yet it all rests on Bullock. She's fun to watch.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
A slick political dramedy with bursts of personal humor but an overdose of Hollywood gloss .

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
The film indulges in the unabashed goofiness that stoked Green's "Pineapple Express," and which Sandra Bullock demonstrated to raucous effect in "The Heat."

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
A horror film wrapped in a fast-talking political comedy.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
stumbles over a vast terrain of self-serving scoundrels (Trump trumps anything they can make up), but livewire Bullock never lets hypocrisy out of her comic kill zone.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Green . has little feel for the movie's comic turns, and his way with the drama is held back by his obvious and conventional sympathies.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Despite Sandra Bullock's best efforts, she can't make "Our Brand Is Crisis" much more than what it is: A predictable political comedy that hits all the expected beats and goes sappy exactly when you think it will.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is funny enough to get its share of laughs but, in its angry heart, it's a tragedy - and the saddest part is that too much of this story is true.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Much of what the film considers fodder for satire is too familiar to feel revelatory or shocking, while characters that start out believable behave in unrecognizably ludicrous ways simply because the script forces them to.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Here, Green disappears deeper than he ever has before into workmanlike competence; the only personal signature is a funky, slow-mo dance party, which the filmmaker somehow manages to insert into every movie he makes.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
You want to know how the Janes of the world happen. Is it money? Power? Ideology? You never find out.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Ultimately, "Our Brand Is Crisis" isn't as hard-hitting, trenchant or angry as it should be.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Can Sandra Bullock in top form overcome longtime American audience resistance to comedies about politics and maybe even get another nomination in the process?

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Our Brand is Crisis hits a lot of clunky notes and the end is unforgivably cornball, but it's still one of the liveliest political black comedies I've seen in a while.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Offers some nice behind-the-scenes glimpses of how political sausage is made just as America's political sausage is sizzling on the fire.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Our Brand Is Crisis" is in that annoying category of movie that sends audiences away thinking, "It's almost good, but something is off."

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
In Bullock, "Crisis" has a star who makes the whole thing seem better than it probably is.