Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

As tricky and satisfying as any of David Mamet's airless cinematic shell games. Mamet's films are all plot and no atmosphere; this one has a squalid, urban-greed-meets-the-gutter mood that lends its filigreed cleverness an unusually resonant kick.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

Deliciously funny and fiendishly clever con-man comedy that begins on a note of ingenuity that it then sustains with the tension of a high-wire act.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

The kind of movie that seduces you into becoming putty in its manipulative card-sharking hands and making you enjoy being taken in by its shameless contrivance.

Variety by Todd McCarthy

A seductively structured and superbly acted suspenser that breathtakingly piles swindle upon scam without giving away the game until the very end.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

Wickedly clever drama.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

When you think you've figured out Bielinsky's great game, that's when you're in the most trouble: He's the con, and you're just the mark.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

Has more twists than the Pacific Coast Highway and more layers than a stack of silver-dollar pancakes. If you can wrap your mind around one unlikely condition, the picture provides unalloyed pleasure for connoisseurs of cinematic con artists.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey

Bielinsky's movie builds like a poker game in which the players, having invested everything, cannot afford to fold.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Two suggestions as you watch it: Never take anything for granted, and keep your hand on your wallet as you leave the theater.

New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

Clever, compelling, funny and unpredictable, and it has a lollapa-looza of an ending.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker

It may not keep you guessing to the end, but there are enough surprises and wry revelations, right down to the last play, to make this a most satisfying cinematic confidence game.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer

If Nine Queens were a great film, instead of just a very good one, this rottenness would be so pervasive that it would burst the bounds of the plot; it would make us shudder.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Leaves you feeling tense and terrific. It's fun to be fooled.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

An accomplished and enjoyable Spanish-language debut feature by Fabían Bielinsky.

Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow

The movie may be Nine Queens, but it slakes your thirst for surprises and thrills because of its Nine Jokers.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

Often more ingenious in appearance than fact. The hunter-gets-captured-by-the-game scenario is predictable and the sequence of shell games does not, when reconsidered, actually add up.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Has a customarily jovial air but a deficit of flim-flam inventiveness.