49
Metascore
29 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Screen DailyAllan HunterScreen DailyAllan HunterA solidly engrossing political drama, anchored by a commanding central performance from Liam Neeson.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeIt's a role very well suited to Liam Neeson, whose righteousness fills the screen and sometimes seems all the movie can offer.
- 60ScreenCrushMatt SingerScreenCrushMatt SingerThe screenplay, written by director Peter Landesman and based on books by Felt and John D. O’Connor, does a fine job of condensing a sprawling conspiracy into a digestible feature, although it sometimes favors clarity over nuance and winds up enunciating important plot points in glaringly unnatural dialogue.
- 50The PlaylistKevin JagernauthThe PlaylistKevin JagernauthMark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House couldn’t be more timely, yet those parallels never quite resonate.
- 50VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen Gleiberman"Mark Felt,” despite bits of bureaucratic cloak-and-dagger intrigue and a commanding lead performance by Liam Neeson, is a film that pings off relevance more than it feels charged with it.
- 50For its faults as a movie, the story is still compelling as a bit of history, and more so in the midst of a presidential administration that at times seems to be taking all the wrong lessons from Nixon.
- 50The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloThe A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloUnfortunately, Felt’s actions, while historically important, don’t exactly make for riveting drama, especially compared to a classic about two dogged reporters. Nor does the film succeed in making Felt himself particularly interesting, except perhaps as a proxy—purely by coincidence, one assumes, given any movie’s lengthy gestation period—for another, recently terminated FBI honcho.
- 50The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. Scott“Mark Felt” is a sharp portrait set against a blurry background, a history lesson that won’t help you on the test. It is possible to savor the crags and shadows of Mr. Neeson’s performance without quite grasping why Mr. Landesman thinks the story is worthy of such somber, serious and sustained attention.
- 40The GuardianJordan HoffmanThe GuardianJordan HoffmanIt’s surprising that a film about Deep Throat could be such an anticlimax.
- 38Slant MagazineDerek SmithSlant MagazineDerek SmithMark Felt is a kind of hagiography, and it leans toward whitewashing its subject's legacy, which extends even to the man's illegal break-ins and wire-tapping of the leftist activist group the Weather Underground.