Time Out by David Fear

When violence eventually rears its ugly head again, the effect is as anticlimactic as the movie’s title is misleading. Brief bliss is a red herring; there’s only a lifetime of pain left in such acts’ wakes.

Variety by Dennis Harvey

Powerhouse performances by Liam Neeson and James Nesbit make this an intense, ultimately moving tale.

The A.V. Club

Hirschbiegel fails to discipline his English-speaking cast, allowing Nesbitt so much rein with his caffeinated performance that sympathies shift to Neeson’s comparatively sanguine murderer.

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

The title of the overlong Fifty Dead Men Walking refers to lives saved by Sturgess' character, who is still in hiding years later.

The A.V. Club by Sam Adams

Hirschbiegel fails to discipline his English-speaking cast, allowing Nesbitt so much rein with his caffeinated performance that sympathies shift to Neeson’s comparatively sanguine murderer.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams

A director whose breakthrough was the story of a madman's last stand has exceeded that feat with the story of an angry man's next step.

San Francisco Chronicle by Amy Biancolli

An imperfect but intensely human movie that ponders the aftershock of violence, could have been an exercise in overacted sappiness. Instead, it's as hard and uncompromising as remorse.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

On balance, it's a good movie but not a great one. Probably the only reason it's getting North American distribution is because of the involvement of Liam Neeson.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

Captures the awful intimacy and the grimy, second-rate quality of the Northern Ireland conflict in resonant fashion.

Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein

Ultimately, Five Minutes of Heaven is stronger as a whole than its individual parts. It's a well-performed piece that perhaps required a more calibrated hand than Hirschbiegel's proves here.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

A forceful Neeson and an even more intense Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday) both show their stuff and obscure the unrelieved pain endured by the men they portray.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

A feature-length talkathon built on a sketchy premise, some unpersuasive psychology, a pinch of politics and strong star turns from Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, the appeal of all those words runs out long before the director Oliver Hirschbiegel turns off the spigot.

Village Voice

The production design is spot-on, but Hirschbiegel tries way too hard to create tension, making every occurrence--a record needle dropping, a car door slamming--an unsubtle potential bomb, fraying your nerves like a cheap horror movie.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

Based on a true story -- that never happened. That might explain why the film circles and circles its subject but never strikes dramatic pay dirt.

New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier

Early scenes set up the tragedy, but the majority of Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie is set in a TV studio where the two eventually face each other, and the tension, unfortunately, quickly becomes stagey.