Haunting and chilling, yet biting black tragi-comedy.

This impressive - and utterly depressing - feature debut is another in the current rush of testaments to the power of the new corporation to suck the goodness from its employees and all who have the misfortune to enter its orbit.

A devilish updating of Verdi's "Rigoletto."

If you require that you "like" a movie, then Rick is not for you, because there is nothing likable about it. It's rotten to the core and right down to the end. But if you find that such extremes can be fascinating, then the movie may cheer you, not because it is happy, but because it goes for broke.

A deliciously bitter tale of lust and betrayal.

Feels like it was written by an oddball artist-temp type with an ax to grind - which, as it happens, it was.

Rick (Bill Pullman) is an embittered cad who fails to earn the audience's sympathy, so the film falls short of its source's tragic dimensions. That aside, Daniel Handler's script and Curtiss Clayton's direction hit all the right notes, especially in the final act.

The belated sentimentality of the movie is as thudding as its fire-and-brimstone moralism; they're really two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

Everything about this curio is claustrophobic.

It’s a frequently riveting gambit, and the actors give it their all. However, the mood and the stylized camerawork make the proceedings too arch to completely succeed.

Seems to want to be a fierce satire of corporate culture. But by hewing so faithfully to their source, the creators don't let the material pursue its own direction, and the result feels dramatically arbitrary.

It's hard for Rick to maintain this jangled tone, which aims to be simultaneously heartbreaking and broadly satirical. The latter tack pushes Rick too far, and too soon.