50
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 83The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangOne of the most undersung and most potent pleasures of genre cinema is the excuse it has given us, time and again, to watch attractive people fall in love with each other, and if you’re in a romantic frame of mind, Racer and the Jailbird delivers so wholly on that front that it goes a fair way toward compensating for the film’s deficiencies elsewhere.
- 60Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayLos Angeles TimesNoel MurrayRacer and the Jailbird remains absorbing throughout, thanks primarily to the two leads, who are both almost frighteningly believable as lovers willing to risk everything to stay together.
- 60Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganScreen DailyFionnuala HalliganAn indulgent 130-minute running time and a plot that wildly over-stretches sees Racer ultimately bounce off the rails.
- 60VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanThe whole thing becomes drenched in a kind of downbeat sentimental martyrdom that feels oppressively old-fashioned and moribund.
- 58The A.V. ClubA.A. DowdThe A.V. ClubA.A. DowdDespite Bibi’s need for speed, Racer And The Jailbird sputters more than it guns.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijSchoenaerts is his usual, intense self, Exarchopoulos has here found her best role since Blue and there’s no denying their chemistry is wild. But their characters become prisoners of the many twists and turns of the narrative instead of rising above it; their personalities aren’t revealed through the story so much as they are constrained by it.
- 50The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe two leads are sensational, but the movie, drained of its life force and stuffed with confusing plot complications — like a shoehorned-in undercover agent and some mysterious Albanians — never recovers.
- 40CineVueChristopher MachellCineVueChristopher MachellRacer and the Jailbird is a stylish, often promising film, but sadly one that never coheres into genuine drama.
- 38Slant MagazineChuck BowenSlant MagazineChuck BowenThe film comes to concern a selfless martyr before morphing, most absurdly, into a disease-of-the-week tearjerker.