Metacritic reviews

It’s a fine swan song for Ashby.

The plot doesn’t make much sense, but the film is filled with lovely little moments courtesy of Bridges, who brings a casualness to this character that feels right.

The movie's a mixed bag, probably because the script was written by drug-traffic expert Oliver Stone of "Scarface" and "Midnight Express" and David Lee Henry of "The Evil Men Do" on the one hand, and directed by sensitive guy Hal Ashby of "Harold and Maude" and "Coming Home" on the other. It's an unhappy hybrid, a valiant but impractical attempt to upgrade the genre. [25 Apr 1986, p.27]

What could have been a better film delving into complexities of one tough-but-vulnerable alcoholic sheriff out to bust a cocaine ring, instead ends up an oddly-paced work that is sometimes a thriller and sometimes a love story, succeeding at neither.

What happened? With Ashby, Bridges, Arquette and a script co-written by Oliver Stone, you expect the result to be better than a long drawn-out episode of The Equalizer.

8 Million Ways to Die is a ponderous, convoluted improbability, with more inexplicable actions and situations than "The Big Sleep," which is the last time those two films will ever be mentioned in the same sentence.

The movie is one of those can't-miss projects that, uh, misses...Altogether, this is about the most listlessly paced thriller you could imagine: Ashby's penchant for letting his actors improvise just results in endless dithering; and the image is weirdly flat -- the movie's shot almost entirely in profile. Actually, there aren't just 8 million ways to die -- now we know there are 8 million and 1. [25 Apr 1986, p.D2]

Considering the major talents involved here, one would expect to find something more than a run-of-the-mill crime thriller. In a sense one does, for 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE is a paralyzingly inept film.

The performances -- even those by Rosanna Arquette and Jeff Bridges, as Sarah and Scudder -- are simply trashy; they're throwaway stuff. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]

HOW did Eight Million Ways to Die commit suicide? Let us count the ways.