Metacritic reviews

Gloria is pure, unembarrassed jive--a hipster's lark of a movie--and Rowlands give a great jive artist's performance, straight-faced and charged with sly conviction. [06 Oct 1980, p.72]

Gloria is tough, sweet and goofy.

Cassavetes and Rowlands lend a screwball energy to this thriller, ably playing conflicting moods of suspense and silliness off each other to complicate an otherwise straightforward genre film.

Gloria is the rare Cassavetes film to expand its scope beyond an insular community.

Under the masterful direction of husband John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands delivers a gutsy, spellbinding performance in this excellent crime film.

The agreeable Gloria - despite the TV advertising, it is neither violent nor frightening - has three built-in audiences, none of which should be disappointed in the slightest: students of acting, children and suckers for fairy tales. [11 Oct 1980]

Heightened emotion and nagging banal reality fight each other for screen space, doing final battle in a daringly ambiguous ending.

Cassavetes films Rowlands, his wife, with self-deprecating adoration; the demanding man likens himself to the defenseless boy, and both are saved by this gloriously burdened woman who would kill for them.

It has its charms but not for a minute is it believeable, and it's certainly never embarrassingly moving in the schmaltzy way of such slick Hollywood kidflicks as Paper Moon and even The Champ. [01 Oct 1980, p.19]

The rapport that ought to evolve between Gloria and her juvenile charge never quite makes it from the filmmaker's imagination onto the screen. [10 Oct 1980, p.E7]