A noticeable step down from the highs of The Guard and Calvary, War on Everyone is still only McDonagh’s third effort and nonetheless a bold, lively endeavour.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The film is in love with the tropes it ridicules, and it doesn't take long for that love to dwarf any possibility of critique.
You can’t let your heroes be truly, purely horrible. But McDonagh’s moral twist comes in way too late and much too hard. It leaves you dizzy.
Entertaining though it is in parts, it can’t really be said to mark any particular growth for McDonagh as a filmmaker, being both less angry and more cynical that the brooding "Calvary" and consequently less memorable and relevant too.
Screen International by Lee Marshall
War On Everyone is essentially a clothes hanger for smart one-liners, verbal and visual, and its success will depend partly on how folks like the look of the clothes hanger.
Consequence of Sound by Marten Carlson
McDonagh seems to have more to say in this film, but it’s lost among the narrative and stylistic inconsistencies.
A thinking person’s Bad Boys, this off-kilter indie crime comedy introduces two deliriously warped lawmen to the screen. Here’s to a Cuba-invading sequel.
McDonagh’s script is so ad hoc, so clumsily random, that nothing adds up to anything.
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
War on Everyone is a little too keen to advertise its own cleverness. The characters feel more like random collections of quirky tics than real people.
Theoretically, getting to see Peña and Skarsgård goof around with these leading roles is the film’s headline draw; but the script is so misguidedly pleased with itself, all you’re doing is watching two amiable stars mug strenuously and try their best.