Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Child 44" is involving despite itself.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Child 44 could have been far more compelling had it dug deeper into its political thriller layers and not drifted into yet another story of a diabolical killer on the loose.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Thanks to a feeble script, bland direction and - God, why? - those impenetrable accents, no one emerges from this fiasco with much dignity.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's as tedious as a bottomless bowl of borscht.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The usual serial-killer thriller in Soviet drag.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
A muddled, mumbling thriller that never gets us in an iron grip.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Just say nyet.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
[An] unrelentingly grim, plodding, and close-to-incoherent adaptation of Tom Rob Smith's best-selling mystery.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
"Child 44" plays like a curious relic of an earlier Cold War mindset, when Western audiences took comfort that they were living on the right side of the Iron Curtain, and relied on movies to remind them as much.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, what we have is a bloated, grim, underwhelming affair, which is unfortunate - because the movie starts out with a lot going for it.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Given these actors and the ravishing decrepitude of the locations and costumes and the lustrous cinematography of Oliver Wood, I found it more than watchable the whole way through.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The movie doesn't really captivate the way it should, and as the manhunt stretches on it actually diminishes in suspense, ultimately overstaying its two-plus-hour running time.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
A Soviet-era slog through crime and corruption, painted in grim shades of muck, blood, moss and bark, director Daniel Espinosa's "Child 44" turns a best-selling period-piece procedural into a slow, tedious thriller almost totally devoid of thrills.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
For long stretches, it's dull and plodding, chugging along on the fumes of its earnest intentions. Still, there are worse ways to kill two hours than watching Hardy work his sturdy magic.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
What "Child 44" most resembles is a rushed and crowded pilot for a television drama.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie hints at a riveting story but is incapable of delivering it.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Despite gritty atmosphere and a sometimes smart script by the estimable Richard Price, whose credits include "The Wire," "Child 44" can't sort out the basics.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As the illusions mount, they don't amount to much, leading up to a big finale that piles on the improbabilities and quietly sweeps them under the rug.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chu is more craftsman than poet, but the charismatic ensemble cast engages in the trickery with style.

Name : Mark Daniell / Alias : Toronto Sun
By the time we get to the London-based finale, the illusion the Horsemen pull off comes across as just completely implausible. It's almost as if the filmmakers were saying - didja get all that? Well, too bad.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
There's no arguing that there's a clever concept that anchors the "Now You See Me" franchise - expect more sequels - but razzle-dazzle and the art of misdirection can take you only so far.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
A madly spinning top of a movie, powered by an eagerness to please that somehow comes off as more innocent than calculated.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
The film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson . as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
"Horsemen reappear in London; world holds its breath," blares a newspaper headline in this sequel, rather overestimating the world's fascination with magicians - as well as its recall of the first movie .

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
"Now You See Me 2" is a sequel that gets it right. It's as if everyone involved here analyzed what worked the first time around in 2013, and then decided to top it.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
For their next trick, they make a next trick sound like an attractive prospect.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
This is no mere haunted house movie. This is a tour through a giant, spring-loaded funhouse.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What it doesn't have is any kind of real magic.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie offers neither the astonishment of the magicians' artistry nor a dramatic view of how they do it.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
The film is, at times, almost sinfully fun, assuming you have a taste for self-indulgently logic-free hedonism.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Just as cheerfully outlandish as the caper flick's precursor, with the acceptance of fancy tricks and misdirection twists dependent on an audience's love of a good hoodwink.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Try to remember this movie, a few days after seeing it, and you'll find that - like magic - it's disappeared.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Twice as preposterous and half as fun as the original.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's all about mystery and suspense, deceiving the audience in entertaining ways. It's much more enjoyable than the typical summer sequel du jour.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
And of course, there's no danger of mistaking computer-enhanced trickery for actual sleight of hand, so even the modest but honest pleasure provided by quality card work is compromised.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Pay no attention to the plot behind the curtain, Now You See Me 2 says, because it barely registers and hardly matters. Just go with it and watch two hours-poof!-disappear.

Name : Tomris Laffly / Alias : Time Out
Forget what trick-debunker Morgan Freeman says: You don't have to see this to believe it (or see it at all).

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Making a successful sequel is always a little bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But the only magic trick here is how slowly they've made two hours of our lives disappear.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
Now You See Me 2 disappears with not a poof, but in a hyper-kinetic blur of hectic plot mechanics, ceaselessly nattering characters and so many ploys of misdirection that the film's own direction got lost up someone's sleeve long ago.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Now You See Me 2 gets giddy on its own unreality.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
My main problem with these movies is insufferably old-fashioned. With so much digital effects work guiding so many of the action scenes, the simple pleasures of sleight-of-hand are all but lost.

Name : Mark Feeney / Alias : Boston Globe
Why make a sequel? Well, why not: This one is more fun.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This longer, louder sequel to 2013's Now You See Me adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada." You wish the Horsemen would make you disappear.

Name : Lenika Cruz / Alias : The Atlantic
But very little about this hollow sequel to 2013's heist thriller Now You See Me feels mysterious; its biggest set-pieces will make viewers ask not "Whoa, how'd they do that?" but "Wait, huh?"

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
More than once, characters in "Now You See Me 2" make references to pulling back the curtain. And what's behind that curtain is just as much of an incomprehensible jab at the audience as everything else in this film.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
No less than in the glossy caper's 2013 predecessor, the plot rides a surging tide of ridiculousness and culminates in a pileup of unconvincing explanations.