Metacritic reviews

Casino Jack is really a look at how the culture of Washington was rebuilt to sell itself to the highest bidder.

Indispensable viewing.

Gibney has enough material for a dozen movies here, but his attempt at an overview, however unwieldy, paints one hell of a nauseating picture.

A film that's always on the move, a smart, lively, thoroughly involving doc about a complex, critical subject.

As one interviewee opines: "It's all about the money."

The narrative trots all over the globe, including stops for labor exploitation in the Marianas Islands, dealings with Russian mobsters, ripping off Indian tribes in the desert southwest, and jetting to Scotland for rounds of golf with impressionable politicians.

Gibney does finally kick the focus off Abramoff to bemoan the legalized-bribery system that’s the rule, not the exception.

That the film is overlong ultimately testifies to its importance, though after a while, the outrageous details start to run together like surreal satire. Except, of course, that it's all true.

Running two hours, "Casino Jack" is an exhaustive and exhausting elaboration of Abramoff's canon of greed and power that will enervate audiences with a surfeit of details.

The big absence here is the man himself; Gibney couldn’t get the jailed Abramoff on camera, either due to unwillingness or a Justice Department intervention. Whatever the reason, it’s crippling.