Though it gains traction toward the end, viewers may finally feel puzzled or indifferent. You expect a bit more from the end of the world.
- Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2012
Rehashing old arguments in the hours before certain death is a tedious waste of time - theirs, and ours.
- Scott Tobias, NPR, March 23, 2012
If the end of the world was just hours away, would New Yorkers still be able to get takeout? Yes, if Abel Ferrara's mind-bending "4:44 Last Day on Earth'' is any indication.
- V.A. Musetto, New York Post, March 23, 2012
Ferrara movingly celebrates connection, cooking life down to just its barest essence: a man, a woman and a need.
- Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2012
Ferrara doesn't give his protagonists room to do much beyond have arguments and sex (though the intimacy is shot well).
- Scott Bowles, USA Today, March 22, 2012
Your last day - or, as it happens, the whole planet's last day - will be just like every other one. Mr. Ferrara makes this point with ingenuity and characteristic thrift by using found news footage to provide images of apocalypse.
- A.O. Scott, New York Times, March 22, 2012
Dafoe, with his angular, ever-watchable Edvard Munch features, plays well off the impish Leigh, but sadly, they have little to do besides a "Last Tango at Armageddon" riff, albeit with a genuinely moving finale.
- Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News, March 22, 2012
Ferrara's thin idea for a movie - life goes on, even when it's about to stop - would have been a lot better had he given his characters more to do.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly, March 21, 2012
It's both chamber drama and experimental found-footage film, relying heavily on appropriated media to provide context and subtext to its disaster fiction.
- Karina Longworth, Village Voice, March 20, 2012
This is pretty standard not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper-punctuated-by-an-occasional-blowup stuff.
- Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies, March 19, 2012
The film lacks any serious attempt to grapple with mortality.
- Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York, March 20, 2012
The mechanics of the pending cataclysm don't interest Ferrera so much as the emotional stakes: How do people act when there's no future left?
- Sam Adams, AV Club, March 22, 2012
It's only natural that Abel Ferrara's vision of the end of the world should take corporeal form as a quasi-autobiographical hangout movie.
- Jaime N. Christley, Slant Magazine, March 17, 2012
