Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
An enjoyable documentary, with some painless lessons. And a good heart, too .

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
Although its chief asset is its inherently entertaining subject matter, "Monkey Kingdom" does far more than just let the cameras roll: It teases a compelling drama out of one monkey tribe's complicated social hierarchy .

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Monkey Kingdom" tugs our heartstrings to the top of the trees. With a lot of patience, and perhaps a little trickery, directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill have produced a simian "Cinderella."

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
If you don't love monkeys already - and really, we all should - then "Monkey Kingdom" will swing you in the right direction.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Monkey Kingdom" clocks in at a very digestible 82 minutes and doesn't overstay its welcome. It doesn't monkey around - that's left to the film's subjects, who are more than happy to oblige.

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film should hit the sweet spot for family audiences.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Stick around for the credits to find out how pivotal scenes were shot for this worthy addition to Disney's long tradition of nature family films.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Monkeys.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
As much fun as a tree full of toque macaques, Monkey Kingdom is arguably the most entertaining of Disneynature's eight features.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
You know how nature docs work. You forgive the hoked-up comic relief . and tasteful allusions to death and dying and procreation because the tight shots of Maya's lil' Kip are so durn cuuuuute.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
The story of the colony's exile and return feels like a dull sermon, but the animals themselves, with their expressive faces and Moe Howard hairdos, can switch from slapstick to pathos faster than Charlie Chaplin.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This may be an unabashed, Disneyfied version of nature. But it's also fun, touching, and expertly assembled.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The film offers a valuable life lesson in the powers of determination and timing, but most of all it's darned entertaining.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Monkey Kingdom is delightful, and its swinging and vaulting best any stuntwork you'll see in this year's summer blockbusters .

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A populist take on simian society and alpha leadership leads to an entertaining look at caste systems in the animal kingdom.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
You're likely to laugh and learn in equal measure-and so will your little ones.

Name : Janice Page / Alias : Boston Globe
It's been clear for awhile now that Tina Fey rules. "Monkey Kingdom" is just the latest entertainment to benefit.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
You couldn't do much better than "Monkey Kingdom" to get kids invested in learning about, and protecting, the natural world.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The cheekiest, funniest, and most purely entertaining entry in the Disneynature series.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
It's hard to imagine what message children will take away from this film other than that monkeys are just like characters in a fictional Disney movie, which they are not.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
I doubt The Gunman will do much to advance Penn's foray into action-hero bankability, and that's probably a good thing. He's too fine an actor to be mired in nonstop shootouts while flashing his pecs and looking scowly.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Penn, aiming for weary, battered intensity, settles into a zone somewhere between fatigue and indigestion.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
OK, we've seen the biceps and the abs. Very nice. Now, back to the brain.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Watching Penn pump iron and denounce capitalism for two hours would be roughly as illuminating as this monotonous Euro-thriller.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It succeeds, partly because the moral climate it presents seems so confused, but mainly because of Penn's particular aura of irascible integrity.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Penn's need to be seen as a guy of integrity is left naked in The Gunman, but at least he's having some fun with the action-movie trappings, and with taking his shirt off.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
A dull, generic retread, made far worse by Penn's self-seriousness as an actor, by the banal political pieties he's grafted on as producer and co-writer, and by the presence of a pitifully retrograde female lead role.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The actors are good and the action is thrilling. And if the film isn't quite as seriously political as I'm guessing Penn told himself it was, it's definitely an offbeat change of pace for us.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Whatever else we might think of Sean Penn's bid for an active middle age via The Gunman, we can't doubt his enthusiasm.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The kind of film that can't be bothered to do any more with its Spanish setting than have a showdown at a bullfight.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The Gunman" may start as a genre exercise of promising purpose, but it winds up being just a lot of bull.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Part of the contract that movies of this sort forge with moviegoers is that the reasons for all the running and gunning won't get in the way of the action. "The Gunman" doesn't play by those rules.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
I object to The Gunman because it's unconvincing and incoherent.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
The Gunman is too disorganized and sloppy to make sense as political commentary or to work on the most basic level as a globe-trotting chase thriller.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
If the film's intent is to condition the audience into a distaste for violence through boredom, it succeeds.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Penn and his fellow actors are fine at conversation, but there are more dialogue-driven subplots here than a movie full of bullets and land mines requires.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A lightweight thriller posing as a heavy political drama, or vice-versa. Not thoughtful and no fun.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
A dum-dum action picture that briefly pretends to be about world aid before returning to muscular, middle-aged men beating the snot out of each other.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Obviousness prevails.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Penn remains a furiously committed method actor, even in a paycheck role such as this one. But he's not enough to prevent the film from becoming the same-old.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
What begins and ends as an exploration of Western exploitation of the Congo mostly follows the standard track of the retired hit-man who realizes that he hasn't quite yet eluded the sins of the past.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Unfortunately, nobody ever won an Oscar for washboard abs. And nobody is going to win five seconds of admiration for 115 minutes of tedium in The Gunman.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A well-executed thriller that leaves us stirred but not shaken.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Yes, there are plot holes aplenty, but the action is tautly staged by Morel and that makes "The Gunman" a satisfactory time-passer.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
I can imagine Sean Penn agreeing to star in this Taken knockoff on the condition that it educate moviegoers about humanitarian crises in Africa; it does, but the film feels misshapen as a result.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Too often feels like just another slice of brainless Eurotrash, packed with saw-it-coming plot twists, half-hearted car chases and an angsty hero with zero charisma.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
There's a grubby, redemptive quality that makes this tough-minded flick feel like the son of "Serpico" and "Salvador."

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"The Gunman" is a predictable slog through action-movie tropes, and Penn's intensity isn't a good fit.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I've pretty much always enjoyed watching Penn in everything, not despite of his hambone tendency to milk every moment of every shot but because of it. This stupid movie is no exception .

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
The Gunman degenerates into dreary setups for guns and gore. Penn merits more. So do we.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The only redeeming feature about The Gunman is its exotic locations.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Sadly, Penn's veiny, sweat-glazed biceps are the most objectively impressive feature of this rote, humorless thriller, a distinctly unconvincing attempt to refashion the star . as a middle-aged action hero in the Liam Neeson mold.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Rarely, though, have two Academy Award-winning actors been so stunningly off the mark in the same movie.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
It's a tasty cast, but the script does not do its job in crucial areas, letting the audience get way, way out ahead of the reveals.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Penn is dour and not the least bit heroic in this movie. He survives the action sequences but neither they nor his participation in them gets the blood pumping.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
It devolves into a mess of worn plot lines. If Morel wanted to give Penn's career new life as a world-weary action hero, he missed his target.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Ultimately this feels like a vanity project designed to do for Penn's bankability, Africa, Spain and mercenaries what the Taken franchise did for Liam Neeson, Paris and Albanian gangsters.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
Like a queasy blend of Still Alice and The Bourne Identity.