Avis Metacritic

A breathtaking exercise in the macabre, a gruesome thriller with quirky cops and a killer of Lecterian complexity, and even when the movie is perfect nonsense, it's so voluptuous that you're grateful to be watching it anyway.

The Crimson Rivers could teach many an American thriller a thing or two about sophisticated creepiness.

More amiably mindless summer distraction than just about anything Hollywood has to offer this season.

For most of its running time, this lunatic euro-thriller is creepy, stylish and occasionally suspenseful.

Never lacks for energy, and the director and his stars stride with focused confidence through the hooey.

Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.

Adequately entertaining but not particularly memorable.

Never lets up: A door can't shut without sounding like a bomb going off; mutilated bodies show up with clockwork punctuality, gratuitously underscored by a relentlessly overbearing soundtrack.

Not even the strong, reflective, world-weary presence of Reno or Cassel's energy can make a dent in a movie in which suspense and tension dissipate quickly, with action sequences not spectacular enough to compensate. All that's left is gratuitous gore.

Makes you gag.