50
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The plot has so many moving parts - so many envelopes of money, dropped names, half-explained schemes and hasty flights - that it quickly becomes more frustrating than illuminating.
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50
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
Though the film is peppered with one-liners tailor-made for Spacey to sling with stinging effect, it doesn't so much leave you laughing as just weary, and wishing this weren't a true story at all.
40
This is fertile material for a darkly comic indictment. Instead, we get recycled cynicism (politicians are hypocrites! more dirty money, more problems!) and Spacey's gallery of impersonations-W.C. Fields, Stallone, Reagan-in lieu of a flawed, flesh-and-blood human being.
40
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
The trouble starts with the casting. The usually reliable Kevin Spacey never quite gets a handle on Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew devoted to unorthodox business methods.
40
In the grand finale, Abramoff fantasizes about using a Senate hearing to blow the whistle on the entire corrupt establishment. His rant offers a clue to how this otherwise pointlessly manic movie might have honed its political edge.
75
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Above all, however, Kevin Spacey is the reason to see Casino Jack. This movie will stand alongside "The Usual Suspects" and "American Beauty" as examples of what the actor is capable of accomplishing when he is properly motivated.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
Slick superlobbyist Jack Abramoff is the colorful subject of Casino Jack a similarly slick and undeniably entertaining true-life D.C. crime story, boasting a robust Kevin Spacey performance.
63
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Spacey holds center. He's a bonfire.
33
Spacey has made a career out of projecting the smarmy elitism of the powerful, but Casino Jack is so painfully clunky that he gets dragged down along with it.
60
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
Hickenlooper too often approaches his subject with the filmmaking equivalent of a wry chuckle.