Critic Reviews

Out from behind his Captain America shield, Chris Evans proves a quirky and compelling actor as Mike Weiss, a personal-injury lawyer who spends most of his time doing drugs.

It's unfair to complain that Weiss seems over the top. The portrayal seems to be accurate.

If the movie ends too abruptly, it still gives plenty of screen time to its nicely screwed-up central character. And it's still a solid, assured feature debut from the latest brothers to watch.

The film is chock-a-block with extraordinary performances and no one will fault the filmmaking either. This is a well-made movie, make no mistake. It just suffers from a dysfunctional hero.

The picture benefits from its performances, notably Evans' roguish appeal as a guy simultaneously driven and destructive.

This lacks the heft of "The Insider" (1999) or the snap of "Erin Brockovich" (2000), but it's a thoughtful entry in the growing subgenre of whistle-blower dramas.

While the Kassen brothers do an impressive job for newcomers -- the film looks great and performances are uniformly solid -- there's some overly blunt dialogue and dead-end subplots that would have been pruned by more experienced filmmakers.

It's Weiss's sheer gonzo energy and his determination to keep it together (barely) in the name of justice that initially fuel this underdog tale, giving it a far more manic, unpredictable edge than your usual courtroom handwringer.

Puncture excels in the smaller touches, from Shaw's quiet performance to the woozy, unrushed motel idylls where the hard-driving Weiss finally slows down for a few breaths.

Though conceptually intriguing, the mix of downward drug spiral with uphill struggle for good never really coalesces.