Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
For an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks and scowls.

Name : Linda Holmes / Alias : NPR
It's fun to watch Chris Rock; it's just fun. And there are parts of this film where it's fun to watch him in exactly the ways he wants it to be.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's a slap-happy movie and often scurrilously funny - the sound of a gifted comic mind finally finding its onscreen voice.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Rock's ambitious passion project - he wrote, directed and stars in it - is a bawdy, uninhibited yet thoughtful social satire about fame vs. artistic fulfillment.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Top Five is a reminder that as often as comedy fails us, sometimes it's our best hope for resuscitation. Seeing it at the end of a crap week, I suddenly felt I could breathe again.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
An innovative take on familiar material, Top Five is an exquisitely paced, rich, idiosyncratic, satirical, yet deeply moving free-form comedy about a Hollywood star who is shadowed for one day by a New York Times reporter.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Rock has said that he wanted to make a movie that captures the energy of his stand-up. Top Five fits the bill.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Top Five" has the bright, high-gloss feel of the most delicious wish-fulfillment fantasies, but it derives its spiky, propulsive energy from the adamantly forthright figure at its center.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
The sweetest surprise in this raunchy comic ride is how artfully Rock lets down his guard. His confident, prowling wit as a stand-up has finally found its way to the screen, enhanced by a bracing vulnerability.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
[Rock is] still not all the way there in "Top Five," his third effort as writer-director-star. But the movie has so many laughs it hardly matters.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Rock is on a roll again.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Just when it seemed like Chris Rock had already done plenty for the culture, along comes his latest work as a writer and director, "Top Five." And it's one of the most vibrant, sly romantic comedies this year.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Welcome back, Chris Rock.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The mess never coheres, but it sends off you on a high anyway.

Name : David Haglund / Alias : Slate
Extremely enjoyable .

Name : Anna Silman / Alias : Salon.com
Rock still hasn't figured out exactly what he wants you to think of him, but the way the film reflects that uncertainty may be the most interesting thing about it.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
In "Top Five," you sense Rock trying to load all these disparate talents onto a conventional romantic-comedy structure. It's a close call, but it holds.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The movie marks the first time Rock's stand-up persona - cutting, vulnerable, afraid of no sacred cows - has survived intact on the way to the multiplex. That alone is reason for fans to celebrate.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With "Top Five," Rock has finally made the transition to true movie stardom.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
What lingers hours later aren't just the laughs but the people.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Like Rock's best stand-up shows, Top Five mixes the sweet with the salty, the naughty with the remarkably kind. It celebrates the darkly hilarious with the light of whip-smart observations.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
It can be delightful, intelligent, crude, clumsy and culturally tone-deaf, depending on which scene is rolling by. One minute it's a major letdown, the next minute a joy to watch.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
It can be hard for a movie to dwell on the problems of the rich and famous without seeming a touch self-serving, but Rock always keeps things in perspective.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The writing is strong enough that when the humor gives way to drama in the second half, there's enough at stake to keep us interested, although Rock still has plenty of jokes in store for the finale.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
To the writing, Rock brings the discipline of his stand-up. Even with some improvisation, there is not one throwaway line in this fat-free script.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Top Five" is a funny movie, but Rock has his sights set higher than lowbrow, and for the most part, he succeeds.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Top Five is Rock's most accomplished work yet, a truly personal story whose comedic riffs on love, race, sex, and celebrity are carefully woven into a credible romantic plot.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
Chris Rock wrote, directed, and stars in this genial, splendidly constructed, occasionally hilarious comic drama with a reflexive twist.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
You come away from it with the thrilling sensation that you're seeing an artist you thought you knew reinvent himself.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
A romantic comedy that's also an extended riff on art, identity, authenticity and what it means to be a black entertainer .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Mr. Rock has made a pyrotechnic pinwheel of a personal comedy, and he's had the wisdom to share it with a strong co-star. While he sends sparks flying every which way, Rosario Dawson keeps the story grounded in calm intelligence and classic romance.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
"Top Five" may be Chris Rock's biggest and boldest film as a director and writer, but a sharper, smarter, realer script would have made it far more than just a lazy, lightweight laughfest.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Richard Roeper.com
A seriously funny, semi-autobiographical film that might be the most accomplished work Chris Rock has ever done for the big screen.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out New York
On the surface, a lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
You'll likely leave the theater smiling. And when's the last time you cold say that about a Chris Rock movie?

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The movie, which alternates between hilariously vulgar gags and some electric improvs and riffs by Rock and his cast of all-stars, has the crackle and pop of a live performance - it energizes you.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Raunchy in extremis, often funny and at times touching, "Top Five" is Chris Rock's sincere attempt to craft a film career largely detached from his stand-up clowning.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Rock's fast-talking rhythms are all over this movie, and they lift it up; it's like dropping in on a party full of funny people, and leaving before the evening fades.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As an actor, Rock doesn't create much of a spark with Dawson, and as a director, he tends to let scenes go on too long.

Name : Noel Murray / Alias : AV Club
While Kidnapped doesn't add anything substantially new to the tradition, Vivas hits his marks with ruthless efficiency.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Swedish director Daniel Alfredson pushes the caper button too many times. More sly wit would have helped things come to a head.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Fairly enjoyable and credit is due to its sterling cast, led by Anthony Hopkins as Heineken .

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
The real-life kidnapping had all the elements of a thriller, so how it became such a mild-mannered movie is anybody's guess.

Name : Nick Pinkerton / Alias : Village Voice
As most of Kidnapped is devoted to watching people in extreme duress, leaving room for little else, it follows that the film exists solely to be "intense."

Name : William Goss / Alias : Film.com
Survival horror has rarely been approached so sparingly and yet, for all there is to admire. the initial sense of potential suspense gives way to the creeping contempt of familiarity.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Heineken may be weighed down by the predictable reality of actual events. Or it just may be lacking in electricity and depth. Either way, it's lacking.

Name : Aaron Hillis / Alias : Village Voice
Glossy, lifelessly paced .

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The true story of Freddy Heineken's kidnapping is fascinating, but "Kidnapping Mr. Heineken" is a disappointingly superficial film in which neither the kidnappers nor their captives are particularly interesting.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Gripping but grueling, this Spanish debut feature scores on technical prowess but its nihilistic viciousness is hard to take.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : AV Club
Much like the lager that gives the film its name, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is bland on the palate and best pissed away.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Anthony Hopkins plays the king of the hops, and he is excellent. So is the rest of the movie, a sober, no-frills account about the highest ransom ever collected up to that time-$10 million and counting.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Despite its true-events pedigree, "Kidnapping Mr. Heineken" is woefully captive to B-movie crime saga tropes.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
One capably staged chase sequence apart, it's not one to set the pulse racing.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Anthony Hopkins and a cast of erstwhile next-big-things go slumming in Daniel Alfredson's listless, fact-based kidnapping caper.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Starting as a coldly realistic thriller, this film eventually loses its bearings as the director Miguel Angel Vivas succumbs to a fit of nihilism, transforming "Kidnapped" into gruesome tit-for-tat torture porn.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
In just a few scenes, Hopkins conjures up some sorely needed fizz. But the low-key vibe of the film doesn't match the high-stakes audacity of the crime.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The utter lack of surprises and waste of a first-rate cast - Anthony Hopkins as Alfred "Freddy" Heineken; Jim Sturgess and Sam Worthington as kidnappers - make for a tremendous letdown.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The sole object lesson in the true-crime drama "Kidnapping Mr. Heineken" is that not every crime deserves its own movie.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Some kind of napping for sure.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
In 1983, five knuckleheads decided to strike it rich by kidnapping beer magnate Freddy Heineken. "Kidnapping Mr. Heineken" is a dull, trite thriller about their crime and undoing.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
My eyes never left the screen and my attention never wandered; in a restricted, technical sense of the term, "Kidnapped" is a masterpiece.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
Not only is Hopkins's Freddy incomparably more charismatic than any of his captors, he's the only one who, weirdly enough, seems to be enjoying the ordeal. But maybe that's simply a matter of pay scale.