Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
After two hours of "The Walk," I felt as if I'd walked the wire myself.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Ultimately there's enough daredevil verve here to offset the pedestrian comedy undergirding it.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
These dizzying IMAX 3-D visuals truly are big-screen magic, taking us inside Petit's transcendent experience as he navigates his preternatural path, indulges his showman's flair, and - agh! - reclines to commune with the heavens.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
It may not get inside the head of its pole-balancing protagonist - it doesn't really even try - but Zemeckis' movie takes you skyward.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
The Walk becomes a first-rate caper movie, with a thrilling finish that can't help but move you (if you haven't covered your eyes).

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
The Walk, in its last half at least, is a dazzling piece of work, particularly in 3-D; even so, its most luminous effect is an actor.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A razzle-dazzle thriller with eye-popping visuals, white-knuckle tension and just the right note of melancholy.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
Zemeckis's failing is his inattention to every other detail, but The Walk undeniably exists for its climax: one stunt it does manage to pull off flawlessly.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
It's two-thirds of a great film but the slow start and unremarkable first hour hold it back. Still, for those who buy into the precept that "good things are worth waiting for," The Walk unquestionably delivers.

Name : Alex Pappademas / Alias : Grantland
For at least the duration of the 25-minute wire sequence, The Walk is a breathless, exhilarating moviegoing experience. It's just not much of a movie.

Name : Dan Callahan / Alias : TheWrap
"'The Walk' is that rare movie that might please practically everyone, from viewers just looking for a thrill to those who might enjoy a story that sounds like a tall tale but winds up being discreetly poignant."

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Then we're finally aloft, with the man on his wire, and Mr. Zemeckis and his colleagues lift their groundbound production into the realm of high art.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
It's when the walk portion of The Walk arrives that this unevenly scripted, fact-based thriller achieves its full potential.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
For those who want to feel like they're 110 stories up and living in the clouds, Hollywood does its job conjuring movie magic with a breathtaking Walk to remember.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It is, as it should be, a slight, mischievous, light-footed film, full of imagery.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It would be swell if all of "The Walk" came together as beautifully as the computer effects do, but it would also be churlish not to appreciate what we do have.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Gordon-Levitt beguilingly captures Petit's irresistible charisma in a performance that completes his transition from indie-film favorite to big-budget star.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : TIME Magazine
The Walk is a visionary high-wire act.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This delivers some frighteningly vertiginous moments once Petit steps off the South Tower into empty space, and Zemeckis wisely milks the climactic wire walk, which lasted 45 minutes and drew a crowd of breathless onlookers below, for all it's worth.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film gets better as it goes, and the last half-hour (especially in 3-D on an Imax screen) is nearly everything it should be: scary, visually momentous, meticulously realized.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A filmmaker with a gift for overcoming the seemingly impossible puts audiences in the place of the man who walked between the Twin Towers in this gripping human-interest story.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
Zemeckis throws all of the emphasis on the walk itself, which minimizes the film's annoyances and justifies the groundwork necessary for the big payoff.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Expect the worst from the first half- that's before Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) strings up a wire between the World Trade Center towers. But then, oh, baby, does this movie fly.

Name : David Rooney / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film's payoff more than compensates for a lumbering setup, laden with cloying voiceover narration and strained whimsy.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The line between gimmicky and magic can be mighty fine, but Robert Zemeckis masters it like a seasoned pro in The Walk.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
By some standards, this isn't much of a movie. But it is a hell of a monument.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Zemeckis finally delivers the goods in abundance in the section that really counts: A vertigo-inducing digital re-creation of Petit's famous walk back and forth between the towers.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
I'd love to say that I was delighted by Robert Zemeckis' "The Walk" from start to finish. But I can't. Not that I was disappointed. Simply underwhelmed. It just didn't click for me.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
The film limps through its first two acts, putting in time until the big moment.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Somehow The Walk succeeds in spite of its immoderation, especially when the stunt is at hand - in 3D IMAX, no less - which is so often the way of Zemeckis movies.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I was simply exhausted by Zemeckis' oppressive insistence that I was being told a valuable, thrilling and humorous story, and was having a good time.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
The Walk serves its purpose by showing you something you've never seen before, from perspectives as impossible as the stunt itself. Zemeckis just chose for too long to luxuriate in the fantasy of it all, when the reality was more than enough.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
As it comes together, the film becomes just as much a tribute to those massive Towers as it is to Petit.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Zemeckis . nearly sinks the film before redeeming it in spectacular fashion.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
The walk itself is the film's central, and only, real achievement, but it's a doozy.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The occasional hokum cannot cloud the stunning, incandescent craftsmanship of the movie's third act.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
While it's clearly constructed with meticulous care, with the wire-walking scenes as breathtaking as CGI allows, it lacks a certain, well, je ne sais quoi.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The last 30 minutes or so are all about the walk. Dariusz Wolski's cinematography is beautiful. and Gordon-Levitt does some of his best acting when he's out on the wire and mostly silent, his face glowing from the sheer crazy joy he's feeling.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
You can't help but hold your breath and clutch the armrests when Philippe steps out into the sky.

Name : Elaine Teng / Alias : The New Republic
Even in its greatest moment, The Walk breaks the spell with an unnecessary narration about how Petit felt in that moment, how the sky looked to him, how a bird came soaring towards his head.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The Walk" satisfies as an absorbing yarn of authority-flouting adventure and as an example of stomach-flipping you-are-there-ness. The journey it offers viewers doesn't just span 140 feet, but also an ethereal, now-vanished, world.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The Walk has been made with the same genial spirit a judge used when he sentenced Petit to perform a free show for children in Central Park for his crime. This is a love letter to lunacy that lets you feel what it's like to tread where only gods dare.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
There are no surprises or hitherto untapped resources mined here.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
A girl-power comedy with a bold twist: The timid heroine blossoms in Afghanistan, one of the most female-unfriendly countries on earth.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
By the time Fey is able to say the words, "This is not about you," the comedy owns the feminism it always had. The war scenes are only so-so, but it wins a bigger battle.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Tina Fey is the biggest asset but even she's not sufficient to make it worth more than a marginal recommendation and a suggestion to wait until it shows up on home video.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
If this role isn't remembered as THE signature moment when we came to think of Tina Fey as an award-level dramatic actor as well as an iconic comic force, it's a substantial step in that direction.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
Should a movie about reporting from such a deeply troubled country really be this entertaining?

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
The filmmaking fails to draw this material together in a cohesive way, and the resulting fragmentation feels more like a side effect than a skillful style choice.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
There aren't enough movies in which Tina Fey fires an AK-47 while grinning maniacally.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
The laughs are scattered, the emotions are muted, and the politics are largely toothless. Yet it still doesn't take much squinting to see the M*A*S*H that might have been.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
The film . rests in a tidiness that's at odds with the messiness of the milieu. And even when we are exposed to glimpses of wartime violence and menace, it's undercut by fuzzy platitudes near the end of the film.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
I found it flawed but fascinating, and a no-fail showcase for Tina Fey's real talents as a serious actress. Best of all, this movie is never boring for a single minute.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
It wobbles in terms of an authentic feel, yet there's no doubt Fey succeeds in her most serious big-screen outing yet.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
That Tina Fey is funny is a given. That she gets inside the tangled mind of a complex woman on a perpetual hot seat is something new.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot isn't a great movie, but it is something rare and important: a woman's story of self-discovery - having nothing to do with her finding a husband - that has gotten room on the big screen.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
An efficient wartime dramedy about middle-aged restlessness and the bubbles we build to distract ourselves from real life.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is a likable construction that points its star in a new direction without ever quite making a point.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Tina Fey, the film's producer and star, keeps getting better and better in each of those positions. Here she hits a new high mark in both.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The film itself feels uncertain, compromised and tentative. Those are very different qualities than brash, or bracing, or provocative.

Name : Simon Houpt / Alias : Globe and Mail
A war-set comedy-drama as messy and ineffective as an Afghan suicide donkey.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The filmmakers keep to the surface of the bluntly rowdy story while conveying apolitical layers of regret and exasperation, in wanly comic and affectingly melodramatic action alike.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Writer and actress tilt between insecurity and bravado, employing dry, observational humour tinged with occasional sentimental flashes only outwardly out of character.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Fey has her moments, and so does "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot." But for a performer who still deserves some big-screen respect, her war-movie comedy still feels a little small-screen, a little timid, a little safe.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is entertaining sometimes, but if you're looking for any real insight, you're looking in the wrong place.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Fey and the cast try to anchor Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which was shot in New Mexico, a not-entirely convincing double for Afghanistan. Despite everyone's best efforts, the end result is a war in which everyone - and especially the audience - loses.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot doesn't serve [Fey] fully, but this is her best work yet on the feature screen. It's a pleasure to see her come into her own as a movie star while playing a woman who must travel far afield to discover her strength and courage.

Name : Mara Reinstein / Alias : Us Weekly
In her most impressive role to date, Tina Fey plays a journalist in the throes of an identity crisis. Alas, her movie has one too.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
True to its title, as well as its flawed but sympathetic protagonist, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is more confused than cynical or opportunistic. Its bewilderment is contagious, and ultimately endearing.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A scattered comedy-drama with few laughs and even fewer insights.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Strange movie. And despite the presence of Tina Fey playing its lead character, a cable-TV reporter named Kim Baker, it's not a funny one.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is by far Tina Fey's best movie. It makes use of her comic sense, but also of her watchful wariness and underlying wistfulness.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
It's wiser than the confusion its title suggests, and it pushes Fey toward a film career that's as uncompromising, unpredictable and intelligent as her TV work.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Thanks to Fey, as well as the other actors, it has grit. But it doesn't have teeth.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
WTF is essentially Eat Pray Love for embeds, filled with jokes and sight gags that are repeated to ever stonier spectator silence.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa move things along fast enough to keep [the problem aspects] from sinking in too deeply, and star Tina Fey holds the spotlight with aplomb.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
There's a sharp comedy to be made about America's misadventures in Afghanistan. This isn't it.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie plays like a global-political farce made by people who've never left the Upper West Side.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
I was rooting for it so hard that I told myself I liked it even as it missed one mark after another. But in the end it's just shapeless and apolitical.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
The movie never quite shakes off a glib, incurious outsider's perspective that can tilt into outright cluelessness, particularly where some of its more egregious casting choices are concerned.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
The questions posed about journalistic ethics, personal integrity, and the problematic high of wartime reporting are all worth considering.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
What work better in the movie are mostly smaller moments: the jokes that land, the rapport between the reporters, and all the weirdly ordinary ways people manage to find a new normal, even in the most WTF circumstances.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
Tina Fey grounds the movie in something real, something urgent and human, and she nearly single-handedly saves the movie from itself. The movie itself isn't particularly serious, but she sure as hell is.