Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and praised it as a "slick and breakneck caper movie that runs like a well-oiled thrill." He praised the performance of Beatty, describing him as "the best con man in movies, certainly since Clark Gable died. He is filled with deals, angles, things he has to pull you over in a corner to whisper. He can make you rich tomorrow, and himself, too, one of these days. And he has an unusual kind narcissism — unusual for an actor. He isn't narcissistic about himself, but about his style; he's in love with conning people." Roger Greenspun of "The New York Times" wrote that the film boasts "an attractive cast, some clever dialogue (also by Brooks), and lots of suspense — at least, until the chase begins and never seems to end, and you wish that everyone would go home and get some rest ... '$' is actually a decent short film that has been made long by the most predictable and least ingenious of means." Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" found the film "ar too leisurely in plot and pacing," suggesting that "Brooks maybe is too serious a filmmaker for this sort of thing. He wants his characters to have depth and motivation, but the principle does not work well herein." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" called it a "crackling good crime-chase-suspense story. Its considerable pleasure is that it sets us up solidly in a colorful, unfamiliar but unquestionably real place — Hamburg, Germany — and plays its ingenious charades absolutely as if they were part of the teeming life of that city." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that it has a "clever premise" and that Beatty and Hawn were "pleasant performers," but "Brooks' script continually interrupts its mood of a slick caper film with slapstick humor. '$' tries to be both a comedy and a caper, and manages to be neither."