68
Metascore
10 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The PlaylistBradley WarrenThe PlaylistBradley WarrenThe world of the film is bracingly immediate and constantly overflowing—dubious sound design or a shift in image quality, while glaring, can’t puncture the holistic nightmare of Matti’s vision.
- 90VarietyRichard KuipersVarietyRichard KuipersBuyBust is a superbly executed action film about drug squad members fighting for their lives in a maze-like Manila slum that resembles nothing less than hell on earth.
- 90Screen DailyJohn BerraScreen DailyJohn BerraAs much as BuyBust seems to be engineered for maximum excitement, it’s not without the complexities that are typical of Matti’s ambitious genre pieces.
- 80The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisWrapping a political-corruption yarn in a blanket of bullets and blood, the Filipino director and co-writer, Erik Matti, slides visual and textual jokes into the mayhem in ways both sly and blatant.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterClarence TsuiThe Hollywood ReporterClarence TsuiThe veteran Philippine genre-meister's ultraviolent action blockbuster goes beyond easy moral binaries to highlight how Duterte's warped worldview has made monsters out of everyone from the police to the peddlers to the ordinary people in between, all of them doing the bloody bidding of a corrupt political class.
- 70Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshLos Angeles TimesKatie WalshIn the cynical worldview of BuyBust, there’s no escaping this crushing cycle of killing and corruption. That real-life message makes this wild action film more powerful, but the violence is a hard pill to swallow.
- 63Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreBuyBust is brimming with life, furiously protected and furiously taken, a bracing introduction of Matti and Filipino cinema to the world.
- 50The Film StageJared MobarakThe Film StageJared MobarakAdd a surprisingly talkie ending that tries to walk back the no-holds-barred bloodshed for the revelation of a secret I honestly didn’t care about anymore and I found myself fatigued rather than excited.
- 50Village VoiceKaren HanVillage VoiceKaren HanThough the film becomes a slog, it has a saving grace in Curtis and Vera’s performances, which serve as neat complements to each other in temperament as well as fighting styles.
- 38RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsRogerEbert.comSimon AbramsSo often bogged down by pseudo-naturalistic long takes and generic cop/robber power dynamics that it makes one wonder what the point of watching such a film is.