Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Firth enters new territory with style and grace, anchoring a smart, high-energy movie that eventually runs out of steam.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
A startlingly enjoyable and well-made action film leavened by humor and slicked along by style, made by, for, and about people who've seen far too many Bond films.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Whether it's "Alex Rider," "Agent Cody Banks" or "Spy Kids," plenty have tried to adapt the 007 shtick to younger characters, with demonstrably dopey results. In the end, the reason it works for Vaughn is that he's making the film for adults.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
This film is surprisingly sweet.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's a strange thing: A Hologram for the King is mostly about a series of nuisances, annoyances and stresses, and yet it's a pleasure from beginning to end.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's that rare fish-out-of-water story in which the fish miraculously manages to stop needing water, and learns to crave air instead.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The problem is not that anything on screen is troubling, it's that nothing there, not even star Tom Hanks, is capable of holding our interest or attention for very long.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
If it sounds like Hologram is basically about a middle-aged white guy getting his groove back in the Middle East, well, yes, it is that. But if you squint hard enough, it's also a little bit more.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
The movie conjures no shortage of potent images, but push a bit deeper and your fist closes on empty air.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Not even the mighty Tom Hanks can save this scattershot adaptation of Dave Eggers' lost-soul novel

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
You have to wonder what this film would feel like if a darker figure, a Robert Downey Jr. or Edward Norton, for example, had been cast in the lead role.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Starring Tom Hanks and directed and written by Tom Tykwer ( Cloud Atlas, Run Lola Run), it veers from dark comedy to drama to buddy movie to romance without being particularly successful at any of them.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
You always trust Hanks, and he makes this "Hologram" feel real.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
It takes an actor with the finesse of Tom Hanks to turn a story of confusion, perplexity, frustration and panic into an agreeably uncomfortable comedy.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : TheWrap
Even when A Hologram for a King rests on shaky narrative ground (which is often), Tykwer's confidently frenetic presentation and a host of surreal grace notes lend it a sense of urgency that keeps us on our toes, if not the edge of our seats.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Writer-director Tykwer skillfully presents a series of fantastical scenes in a way that has us thinking: Sure, that could happen. This is quite simply a beautiful film to behold.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
"A Hologram for the King" is disappointing mostly in that it could have been been better. But that doesn't make it bad.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
It may start with a big burst of energy, but this is a sad, somber film about a world that's slowly, knowingly losing touch with the real.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
It's hard to imagine a more Tom Hanks-y setup than this.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To describe this as a movie about a mediocre businessman biding his time before an appointment probably makes it sound more exciting than it is.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The focus on the way individuals adapt to and defy custom is one of the smartest aspects of the film.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The tone and rhythms are pushy, forced, strained, like the expression on Hanks' face. What should be casual punctuation, filmed in medium shot, ends up in bam-pow close-ups.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
It's Eggers minus Eggers - a whimsical tale that aspires to make its whimsy count for something deep.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An earnest but aimless-feeling adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
Director Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), who also adapted the screenplay from Dave Eggers novel, displays a fine eye and a light touch with cultural detail, and isn't nearly as harsh on his hero as he might have (ought to have?) been.

Name : Nick Allen / Alias : RogerEbert.com
Here's a reasonably-sized star vehicle that finds exciting purpose in presenting an existential crisis.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
It's like an international-relations microcosm imagined by the Coen brothers, down to an occasional sense that the absurdity isn't taking us anywhere.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
It looks expensive and comes off bland.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : AV Club
A Hologram For The King is a 97-minute movie that feels like it was cut down from two-hours-plus, with whole subplots reduced or jettisoned in what was likely an arduous post-production period.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
A "Death of a Salesman" for the out-sourcing era, A Hologram for the King makes full use of Tom Hanks' default note, an everyman struggling painfully against the tide.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Tom Hanks exerts such a gravitational force in his movies, sometimes to his detriment, it's fascinating to watch him struggle for equilibrium in Tom Tykwer's A Hologram for the King.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
I guess I'll have to read the Dave Eggers novel to figure out what this thing is about.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Quiet existential irony, albeit diluted and distorted, still reverberates in this stranger-in-a-strange-land story.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
After a first act that seems to promise a biting comedy, the film gets lost in the desert - literally and figuratively.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
This stranger-in-a-strange-land mood piece has an appealingly serene pace.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Here's a case of consistently miscalibrated tone, from the first clumsy stabs at humor to the hero's default expression, which is painfully pained.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It's true that not much happens - except cinema at its finest.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's not entirely free of stereotypes or sentimental moments. What it is, though, is amazingly likable.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It's a sweet, deliberately meandering movie, and it took me a while to connect with it. But it won me over because ultimately it conveys so well that feeling of estrangement that is both terrifying and comic for any farflung traveler.