The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy

It’s an impressive debut, an ambitious project pulled off with confidence.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

Di Stefano's memorable debut feature makes up for its lack of sophistication with constant forward motion.

TheWrap by James Rocchi

Escobar: Paradise Lost plays more like Greek tragedy than the kind of drug-war tale we’d get in a broader, bigger film, and that is no small part of the many reasons it works.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Meanwhile, everyone in the theatre is thinking: Given that I paid good money to learn about the world’s most frightening cocaine king, why am I watching a movie about the world’s most stupid Canadian?

Variety by Scott Foundas

"Escobar” offers an odd mix of action movie, romantic melodrama and cautionary traveler’s tale, which works better than it should thanks to Del Toro’s fascinating performance and Di Stefano’s assured, muscular helming.

Los Angeles Times by Glenn Whipp

When the plot circles back to those opening moments, the movie finds a momentum that ends spectacularly. And again: Benicio Del Toro is playing Pablo Escobar. What more do you need?

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

Escobar: Paradise Lost employs this structure in a way that divides the movie neatly in half: one hour of tedious expository flashback followed by one hour of solidly exciting present-tense thriller action.

Arizona Republic by Kerry Lengel

After a predictable opening hour, Paradise Lost manages to deliver a surprise or two as it switches gears into a full-on thriller. But it never gets close to the epic heights to which it aspires.

The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

Nick might usurp most of the screen time, but it’s Mr. Del Toro, face flickering from benevolent to vicious and body heaving with literal and symbolic weight, who seizes the film.

Time Out by David Ehrlich

Any insight into Escobar’s relationship with the people of his country is sacrificed in the trade-off — Nick sees him as a charismatic Robin Hood who showers the poor in blood money that’s still dripping wet, but the film forgets the complexity of Escobar’s politics as soon as Nick realizes that he needs to escape. If only Paradise Lost gave us a better sense of what he was leaving behind.

The Playlist by Chris Willman

Whatever fascination the film holds belongs solely to Del Toro and his vanity-free impression of Escobar as a titan whose potbelly and gym shorts do not put the slightest dent in a charisma that hypnotizes a nation.

Observer by Rex Reed

In a footnote to history that is still too close for comfort, he’s the real meaning of paradise lost.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

This is one of the greatest missed opportunities in recent cinema history: Del Toro looms more impressively on camera than he does in the marketing material, embodying a wicked man's perverse sense of family, honor, and self-interest.

The Dissolve by Scott Tobias

Escobar: Paradise Lost takes such a limited view of this multi-faceted figure that it fails as portraiture, and the real center of the film is too much of a bland good guy to compensate.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

Benicio Del Toro's performance is showy, a great actor's parade of indulgences that occasionally sets the deranged camp tone that should have been the narrative's starting point.