It's great screen acting, as [Vincent] Gallo expressively uses his body to make it part of the film's overall design.

Essential Killing goes so far out of its way to avoid political commentary that the commentary that remains is slim, reduced to a familiar, though occasionally striking, statement on man's animal nature.

The religious-themed inserts are incongruous in a project that so studiously sidesteps political markers and prove an unwanted distraction in the cinema.

Skolimowski succeeds in directing a minimalistic escape movie that enhances the physical performance of a wonderfully unrecognizable Vincent Gallo as the Taliban runaway [about] the many-sided taboo of Polish politics and the CIA’s covert operations.