The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Bellocchio’s approach to the story is at once coolly objective — the movie is part biopic, part courtroom procedural — and almost feverishly intense. He has a historian’s analytical detachment, a novelist’s compassion for his characters and a citizen’s outrage at the cruelty and corruption that have festered in his country for so long.

RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams

The sprawling scope of The Traitor is a big part of its dryly funny (though never in a ha-ha kind of way) appeal, and that takes some getting used to.

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

The Traitor is a pleasure to watch. Working with cinematographer Vladan Radovic, Bellocchio blends sweeping camera work and flurries of action with painterly lighting and often ironic musical cues. The story itself is somewhat over-stuffed — the time-jumping narrative (Bellochio and three other writers are credited) and an onscreen counter of murder victims — but this is still a welcome chance to see a great old school European auteur at work.

Austin Chronicle by Matthew Monagle

For many films, all of this would be represented as little more than an onscreen epilogue. In the hands of Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, here adapting the story of the real Buscetta, it’s the jumping-off point for a story of betrayal, modernity, and one man’s struggles with a lifetime of trauma.

Washington Post by Pat Padua

If The Traitor proves anything, it’s that an 80-year-old filmmaker can still pounce.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

The Traitor is a coolly epic appraisal of a country’s struggle with its dark side rather than a mobbed-up melodrama. If it’s “Godfather” clichés you want, there’s always “The Godfather.”

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

Its most valuable asset is actor Pierfrancesco Favino.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

If you want family values, Marco Bellocchio is your man, though they may not be what you expect.

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

The screenplay — written by Bellocchio in collaboration with several others — has no particular point of view regarding Buscetta, seeming content merely to take us step by step through his two decades as an informant.

The Playlist by Bradley Warren

A handsome production and ambitious in scale, the impact of The Traitor is muted by the familiarity of its well-worn tropes.

Slant Magazine by Jake Cole

It’s at its best when showing how gangsters undermine their lofty notions of nobility with displays of narcissism.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

It’s clearly made by a master filmmaker questioning the nature of repentance, and as such is far from superficial; and yet while it never loses our attention, it also doesn’t deliver much of a punch.

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

The film digs into the minutiae, giving off an unmistakable air of expertise, but the screenplay ends up being a collection of footnotes and intriguing digressions without necessarily feeling like an authoritative handling of this sprawling material.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

There’s just no real perspective on Buscetta, which separates this brisk but uninvolving history lesson from the truly great mob movies. I was a little bored with it, too, honestly.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Once The Traitor earns its title, the movie is overwhelmed by legal intrigue and mafia infighting, and flattened into a repetitive and somewhat impenetrable courtroom drama.