75
Just like To’s characters all have a little something to learn from each other, Three is a master class in how movies can be as unique and infinite as the people who make them.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
When the tension finally does break, the movie goes a little nuts, in venerable Johnnie To tradition. The elaborate, largely slow-motion multifloor action climax is as audacious as anything he has staged and filmed.
83
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
To is one of the purest directors working today, and he flourishes within Three’s self-imposed limits, folding and reorienting the space of the hospital using privacy curtains, swinging doors, and a constantly moving camera — in the process producing a rollickingly entertaining movie.
75
The film shows how much Johnnie To still experiments with his form, especially as he continues to transition to digital cinema.
60
Screen International by James Marsh
The veteran Hong Kong director makes his audience wait for the promised fireworks, and Three’s flimsy premise never quite captures the grounded realism of Drug War or Election, or the visual flourish of Exiled or Vengeance.
75
Washington Post by Mark Jenkins
In the movie’s first hour, all the blood is medical. Then the director stages a big shootout, mostly in slo-mo, that’s more clunky than epic. Before that misstep, though, Three is singularly entertaining.
75
The Film Stage by Michael Snydel
After an hour of slow burn simmer, Three culminates in a six-minute set piece that’s among the most memorable action scenes of the year.
80
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
Even during the gunfight, this always remains a character piece: a thoughtful, imaginative movie about stubbornly authoritarian professionals, protecting their territories.
30
Village Voice by Pete Vonder Haar
70 odd minutes of medical tragedy and cops matching wits with criminals devolves into incongruously balletic gunplay accentuated with CGI blood effects so terrible Sam Peckinpah is doing cocaine in his grave. It’s a weirdly calamitous tonal shift, erasing the scant goodwill we’d felt to this point and putting Three down for the count once and for all.
88
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
Best of all: you don't have to wait until a concluding set piece for To to prove his prowess as a storyteller.