L.A. Weekly

As in "Sexy Beast", Mellis and Scinto’s rhythmically aggressive dialogue becomes arialike. But first-time director Malcolm Venville lacks the visual flair of Sexy Beast’s Jonathan Glazer -- a deficit that, combined with 44 Inch Chest’s wobbly final act, comes dangerously close to erasing the film’s uninhibited look at the measure of a man.

The New Yorker by David Denby

A very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way.

Los Angeles Times

Structurally, 44 Inch Chest resembles "Reservoir Dogs"; but, without the added amusement of Tarantino's skewing of narrative time, it feels very much more like a direct adaptation of a stage play (which apparently it's not). The filmmakers do goose things up by playing with reality in the second half, but it all leads to a payoff that, while perfectly legitimate, feels limp.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

It starts to feel less like a thriller than an actors’ workshop.

NPR by Ella Taylor

Mostly, though, 44 Inch Chest is complacently in love with the rhythmically profane talk that came so easily to writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto in "Sexy Beast."

The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett

The film's action takes place mainly in one room, with the five characters posturing like angry macho men but slowly revealing their arrested development and juvenile ignorance of life in general and women in particular.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

The cast to die for is almost entirely wasted in this machismo-marinated slab of Brit-crime nastiness.

Variety

On the debit side, and it's a doozy, the picture's narrative trajectory fails to deliver a third act that takes the story anywhere of note except into a silly realm of cut-rate surrealism. Final reel ends not with the expected bang but with an almost inaudible whimper.

Empire by Kim Newman

44 Inch Chest gets by on the quality of its performances.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it.