Turns out to be a supple, intriguing, and beautifully staged movie. It features Dillon, in his most forceful performance since ''Drugstore Cowboy.''

Overall, Dillon has scored at the helm. Wholly engrossing his film is not, but a valiant first feature it is.

There's a way to love City of Ghosts, and that's to watch it not as a story that should add up to something, but as a series of little episodes with their own specialness and integrity.

After all of these years playing smug street thugs, cocky idiots and patsies, can you blame Dillon for giving himself an elegant girl (Natascha McElhone), a devoted guardian angel, and a little redemption?

Between the Caan and Dillon characters there are atmosphere, desperation and romance, and, at the end, something approaching true pathos.

An exotic throwback to the kind of movies that John Huston used to make, where on-the-lam expatriates, tubby guys with tinny accents, and sinister locals convene in a ramshackle but seductive foreign burg -- and corruption, conflict and come-ons from a sultry female or two ensue.

For his atmospheric debut as a feature director, the actor Matt Dillon has cast himself as a guy in need of saving. It's a nice fit.

Great on atmosphere and less good on everything else. That’s not entirely a knock.

Richly atmospheric and suspenseful.

This is very much the work of a cinephile, calling to mind such middle-period Orson Welles jumbles as "The Lady From Shanghai" and "Mr. Arkadin" as well as dozens of other movies I only half remember, a familiarity that's essential to its charm.

A bit of exotic neo-noir, clunky in parts and long, but often engaging and artfully atmospheric as well.

In some ways it's not a film that surprises us much. But it's a notable directorial debut anyway -- smartly written, very well cast and skillfully done.

This has the unmistakable feel of a vanity project about it, which makes it a little tough to take either Dillon or the film seriously.

Despite a name cast, with Dillon playing an insurance crook, pic is holed by a plot-heavy script that's unsatisfying at a character level and plays like a cut-down version of a much longer, more ambitious saga.