The titular gangster isn't the only one who's dead; according to Ferreri, it was a condition shared by everyone who bought into the late-20th-century ideal of success. They just didn't know it at the time.
– David Fear,
Time Out New York,
25 Feb 2009
fresh:
There are some sharp ideas tucked alongside the tedious high jinks and rank sexism of Dillinger Is Dead.
– Manohla Dargis,
New York Times,
27 Feb 2009
rotten:
Like an Ionesco one-act, the movie is purposely backloaded, rolling along to no apparent purpose and then climaxing with an absurd act of violence that casts a harsh white glare on the bourgeois self-indulgence that preceded it.
– J. R. Jones,
Chicago Reader,
29 May 2009
fresh:
Dillinger is one of those artful endurance tests that views conventional storytelling as a sell-out. Yet the movie's also playful, droll, and unexpectedly wise within its rigorous framework.
– Ty Burr,
Boston Globe,
9 Jul 2009
fresh:
Finding the connective tissue between one incident and the next can be its own form of madness, yet the film is transfixing, too, provided viewers yield to it a little.