The Sicilian represents a botched telling of the life of postwar outlaw leader Salvatore Giuliano.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
22 Jul 2008
rotten:
The dialogue is ponderously poetic, stilted and over-emphatic, characters are convenient cyphers, and both cutting and photography tend towards the bombastic. Folly, then, but gloriously inept and overblown.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
The film is a mess, though hardly on the panoramic scale of Heaven's Gate.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
rotten:
One of this film's big problems is that you can hardly see it. The foregrounds are dark and indistinct. The backgrounds are overlit and washed-out.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
The Sicilian is unambiguously atrocious, but in that very special, howlingly grandiose manner that only a filmmaker with visions of epic greatness working on a large scale with a multinational cast can achieve.