In his initial review, Ebert awarded Vengeance 3 stars out of four, describing it as "a formula thriller done as an elegant genre exercise."

Robert Christgau gave it an A-, finding that: "Like it or not, Morrison's genre exercises are kind of boring.

Maybe expecting a moral compass from such a genre exercise is asking too much.

Writing for PopMatters, John Garratt rated the album seven out of ten, writing "even if this album is a genre exercise, it's still a very fine one".

What makes the film an unusually satisfying genre exercise, apart from the director's youthful brio, is the gnarled authenticity of its cast.

But there are many ways a movie can fail to be good, and "A Sound of Thunder" is, at least, not a dull, mediocre genre exercise.

Although the album does include a few songs in Cajun French and some fiddles, it's not a genre exercise.

Now, as then, they make a muddled genre exercise seem a lot better than it is.

Addictions or not, Peckinpah still felt compelled to turn the genre exercise into something more significant.

That's a surprise to me, because this is a film by the Coen Brothers, and this is the first straight genre exercise in their career.