80
A nail-biter that’s actually quite light on action but so well-scripted and shot, it’s nonetheless edge-of-your-seat material.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
The film is a singularly huge, relentless, all-encompassing set piece that mutates and spasms with terrifying lack of foresight. It's all business, business, business.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Hot-dog Hong Kong action stylist Johnnie To has never achieved the cult status of John Woo in this country, but his explosively entertaining — and startlingly splattery — Drug War should win him new fans.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
In Drug War, Hong Kong genre master Johnnie To gives a superlative lesson on how to give an updated, thoroughly engrossing twist to the classic cops-and-robbers chase.
91
More traditional in terms of atmosphere and plot, Drug War nevertheless features a tense, unstoppable momentum, a morally ambiguous protagonist and hugely involving action scenes.
91
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Drug War brings to mind Soderbergh’s recent "Side Effects", a film defined by similar changes in perspective and genre. However, while "Side Effects" is best at its midpoint, before the viewer has really figured out what kind of movie it is, Drug War becomes both weightier and more playful with each transition, building to a harrowing finale.
75
The low-key nature of what's come before simply serves to render all the more effective the final shootout, when the film careens completely, and bloodily, off the rails.
63
Drug War is by no means a bad film, but it doesn’t do much to push the needle of originality, and doesn’t glide enough to represent perfection of the genre.
80
Not a bad setup for a cops-and-robbers thriller, and in the hands of action-movie maestro Johnnie To, the result comes very close to greatness.
90
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Drug War might arguably be [To's] best film for this reason—it doesn't attempt to raise the stakes on its genre, but instead fully exploits what's there, piecing together an elaborate narc campaign tale out of classic clichés and tight-knot plotting, and letting the disaster of balls-out crime make its own statement.
Incredible thriller that places the viewer in position to do a lot of observation and connection on their own. As a viewer you continually revise your understanding of everything, and so often off balance about what is happening. Everything is rapid fire. And, even when constrained to a simple cops are good, criminals are bad, message, the film is able to complicate this slightly in that the criminals are the only ones who actually mourn.