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Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Its essential trashiness too often takes over. Rather than wondering about Rachel/Ellis' dilemma, you find yourself pondering Verhoeven's consistency in setting up bedroom shots so that there's always a nipple in the frame. Read more
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: The movie scrambles our responses and covers so much ground, with such zest, that its two and a half hours race past like a firestorm. Read more
David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's a marvelous movie-movie, with a new screen goddess. Van Houten has a soft, heart-shaped face on top of a body so naturally, ripely beautiful it has its own kind of truth. Read more
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: ... hugely enjoyable from start to finish. Read more
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: Some may find scenes excessive and take offense at the suggestion that there were good Nazis like Ludwig. But one thing that can be said for Black Book: It's never boring. Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Insanely entertaining -- and often just plain insane -- World War II melodrama. You may hate yourself in the morning, but you'll have to admit Verhoeven gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Read more
Noel Murray, AV Club: Working again with longtime screenwriting collaborator Gerard Soeteman, Verhoeven makes Black Book into a rollicking wartime movie-movie, replacing awards-bait cliches with a strong dose of two-fisted action, frank sexuality, and coal-black cynicism. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: All that keeps the movie from collapsing into soap opera is the exuberant drive of the filmmaking. And the central performance. Van Houten is pretty without being beautiful. Read more
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: As subversive as it is traditional, both enamored of conventional notions of heroism and frankly contemptuous of them. Read more
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Commercial moviemaking of the highest order, superbly mounted and paced. Read more
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Stout-hearted celebration of the Dutch Resistance or total smut? Try both. Read more
Michael Booth, Denver Post: [Verhoeven] hasn't seemed like a serious filmmaker for some time. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Psssst, want to see a dirty picture about good Nazis, bad Resistance fighters, and a fast-thinking, quick-stripping Jewish woman happy to dye her pubic hair blond and sleep with the enemy in the name of freedom? Have I got a lulu for you. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: It's just another Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS disguised as an inspirational story of survival and courage. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: A viscerally effective thriller ends up a repugnant exercise in moral relativism, delivered with the grandstanding swagger of the self-styled provocateur. Read more
Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: Despite the picture's subtitles and its imposing 145-minute running time, Black Book maintains a breakneck pace, pausing only long enough to raise some very interesting questions. Read more
John Anderson, Newsday: It isn't pretty, but for all the melodramatic hoohah of Verhoeven's latest, it all feels pretty real. Read more
Anthony Lane, New Yorker: Far from turning serious, the director of Basic Instinct has proved that, when it comes to grappling with good and evil, his instincts aren't basic enough. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Rachel is played by Carice van Houten, a Dutch actress little known here who is quick to infuse her heroine with sexy style and chilly daring. It's a great role requiring a great range, often within single scenes, and she moves through them seamlessly. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: [Van Houten] is so good in it that it seems only a matter of time before she'll star in a real Hollywood movie -- as opposed to this pretender. Read more
Kyle Smith, New York Post: There is much double- and triple-crossing as Rachel pulls off a series of narrow escapes. But Verhoeven is not quite taking things seriously. Read more
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Pushes all sorts of envelopes -- political, historical and erotic -- against the sanctified background of the Nazi Holocaust, hitherto unthinkable as the linchpin of a lively melodrama like Black Book. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Verhoeven never loses sight of the larger message -- that in those evil times, ordinary people were forced to do extraordinary, and even awful, things just to live long enough to tell their tale. Read more
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Black Book doesn't let the grim facts of the Holocaust get in the way of some ripping pulp. Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Black Book possesses a taut, exciting script that throws surprises at the viewer on a regular basis. Read more
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It's a messy, colorful big-screen entertainment that veers from sober period piece to outrageous melodrama, which is to say it's a Verhoeven movie. Read more
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The happy ending demands that [Verhoeven's] return-journey film -- Black Book -- be a rousing artistic triumph. It isn't. Too many of his lazy Hollywood habits have followed him home. Read more
Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Judged in dramatic terms, situational ethics drive the film, never slackening the pace nor making the nearly 2 1/2-hour running time seem overlong. Van Houten is rarely out of the frame, but she's no mere eye candy. Read more
Claudia Puig, USA Today: A hard-core war film with raw violence, intense action, graphic sexuality and a twisting plot that offers a series of surprises. Read more
Derek Elley, Variety: Hollywood-honed tech smarts and European character sensibilities mesh entertainingly in pacy WWII resistance thriller Black Book. Read more
J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The movie whips along, unafraid of narrative excess or hairpin plot turns. Read more
Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: A lurid, pulpy, slightly perverse potboiler, Black Book suffers mainly from its utter lack of seriousness. Read more