Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein

The world's most successful ring of diamond thieves is inventively and insightfully explored in the documentary Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers.

The Guardian by Mike McCahill

The casefile remains open, but this considered investigation matches the Panthers' bravura with an organisational flair of its own.

New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme

The movie's most exciting when the precision and jaw-dropping nerve of the gang holds center stage.

Slant Magazine

It occasionally succumbs to the pitfalls of the mock-thriller kitsch it slyly dismantles, but it's made up for in a wry and experimental visual style that satirically paints a vibrant crime fantasia.

Slant Magazine by Wes Greene

It occasionally succumbs to the pitfalls of the mock-thriller kitsch it slyly dismantles, but it's made up for in a wry and experimental visual style that satirically paints a vibrant crime fantasia.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

The doc breezily sketches out the process of casing, smashing, grabbing, escaping, and fencing, not in as much detail as David Samuels's stellar New Yorker piece on the Panthers a couple years back, but with some added pathos.

Variety by Scott Foundas

Marking does an admirable job of ceding centerstage to the Panthers without letting the film turn soft or letting her subjects turn themselves into latter-day Robin Hoods.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

You can’t make this stuff up. But Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers would be fascinating even if it wasn’t so timely.

The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold

Smash and Grab has a grating, repetitive score and can look a little homely on the big screen. But unlike many true-crime accounts, it cherry-picks its material successfully and preserves the conspiratorial sense that we’re learning the ins and outs of an illicit art.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

It’s a fascinating inside look, made all the more thrilling by Marking’s access to actual Pink Panthers.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

Smash & Grab aims to replicate the mesmeric tension of a Michael Mann thriller (the crime-cinema impresario is even explicitly referenced by one of the cops assigned to hunt down the group), though the film is so all over the place stylistically that it often seems like several different movies cut together.

The Dissolve by Noel Murray

Marking...does her best to keep it lively, mixing in actual security-camera footage and animated re-creations, along with pieces of old tourist promotions, newsreels, and industrial films. But Smash & Grab’s overall tone is too reserved, given the subject matter.

The A.V. Club by Nick Schager

Coupled with a failure to comprehensively detail tactical patterns or the processes of transporting or fencing stolen goods, Smash & Grab’s inability to truly get underneath the surface of its subjects renders it merely a compelling true-life tale in need of better telling.