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Killer of Sheep
EMAILPRINTMilestone Film & Video
Universal acclaim
Based on 21 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 19 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Charles Burnett
Directed by: Charles Burnett
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 30, 2007
Running Time: 87 minutes, B/W
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, and Jack Drummond
Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life -- sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor. (Milestone Film & Video)
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice J. Hoberman
Killer of Sheep is an urban pastoral--an episodic series of scenes that are sweet, sardonic, deeply sad, and very funny.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Way ahead of its time 30 years ago, and just as stunning today, Killer of Sheep is one of those marvels of original moviemaking that keeps hope of artistic independence alive.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Burnett creates an insistently poetic, devastatingly ironic world and work.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
A lyrical, yet intensely rooted, tragic vision.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
Brilliantly conceived, imaginatively structured, superbly written, stylishly composed and photographed, and very often wryly funny, Killer of Sheep lives up to its official designation as a national treasure.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The result is an American masterpiece, independent to the bone.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Shot on a year's worth of weekends on a minuscule budget (less than $20,000), this remarkable work--conceivably the best single feature about ghetto life that we have--was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as one of the key works of the American cinema, an ironic and belated form of recognition for a film that has had virtually no distribution. It shouldn't be missed.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Killer of Sheep is a miracle movie because it's receiving its first theatrical release 30 years after it was made and because, as a movie, it's miraculous.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
It is the most influential movie you've never seen, deeply affecting many artists and experimental directors who saw it on the museum circuit in 1977 and 1978.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
See Killer of Sheep, and see it again and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better and better.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
A milestone of eloquent understatement that captures the daily life of have-nots as few American movies have.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White
Free of the ghetto clichés that fill the movies made by people who have never lived in one, Killer of Sheep is a strongly individual portrait of black, working-class America.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Burnett's documentarian empathy, coupled with his easygoing skill as a dramatic essayist, result in a film that doesn't look, feel or breathe like any American work of its generation.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A delicately poetic, essentially plotless vision, unblinking but not unhopeful, of life in Watts, where little but the ghetto's name recognition had changed a decade after the riots.
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
One of the strengths of Killer of Sheep, one of the reasons it has not dated, is that the naturalness and simplicity with which it unfolds give it the texture of a story told from the inside.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
Seeing Killer of Sheep is an experience as simple and indelible as watching Bresson's "Pickpocket" or De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" for the first time. Despite its aesthetic debt to European art cinema, Burnett's film is quintessentially American in its tone and subject matter. If there's any modern-day equivalent for the movie's matter-of-fact gaze on the ravages of urban poverty, it's the HBO series "The Wire."
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Having heard tell of its wonders for decades, I found the actual movie less transporting than I'd been led to expect. It's clearly a brilliant debut.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Burnett used many kinds of African-American music on the soundtrack, and the movie itself has the bedraggled eloquence of an old blues record. The amateur actors, who occasionally burst into fury, combined with the black-and-white cinematography, bring the poverty of Watts closer to us emotionally.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
In all honesty, Burnett's writing can be stiff and the acting in Killer of Sheep is indifferent. But the reason to see this film does not lie in the dialogue.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Felix Vasquez, Jr.
There isn't really an overall arc present in Killer of Sheep, and that's the point. There's really nothing meant to be expressed in Killer of Sheep but the experience of poverty, and the inevitability of crime in the face of poverty.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 19 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lee T gave it a1:
Maybe if someone feels really guilty that America can produce a ghetto like Watts then that someone would feel that this movie is worth watching. But that someone would also have no idea what makes a movie worthwhile.
b da gave it a0:
Despite its grainy black and white, its art-house camera-work and its cool music, there is one huge problem: it's unwatchable, due to writing and acting shortfalls.
Jabez H gave it a5:
I really wanted to like this movie. I didn't. It is mostly dull with a few interesting moments. Perhaps this film presents an exotic landscape to those who have never been poor and lived in bad urban areas. I couldn't help feeling like the kid I met on a dusty Andean road when I was in South America. When I said "what a view" about the incredible mountains in front of us, he turned, looked and then turned back to me with a quizzical look. "Where?" he said. It was nothing special to him. Film criticism must pay better than I thought.
Heather gave it a0:
I dont get all the fuss about this one- and i do enjoy quirky, indie movies.i fast-forwarded through a good bit of it. just nothing happening. yes, its about poverty, but what was the point of all of it except watching poor people living their lives? as another reviewer said "i felt nothing". i kept asking myself "what is the point of this?" i was certainly hoping for much, much more! so then i thought "well maybe the shorts on the dvd are the gems"... uh... no-im sorry but i really felt the whole thing (shorts included) were stupid. and i kind of feel bad saying that b/c i know this guy was a student at the time and maybe im missing something? no. i dont think i missed anything. wasnt anything there worth seeing.
Elec E. gave it a2:
This movie goes no where. there is no sense of plot. Nothing happens. Feels like a student movie that a bunch of film students decided to hold in high acclaim b/c when & how cheaply it was made. i felt nothing.
Byron D. gave it a4:
While the film has interesting ideas and images it really comes across as a mish-mash of story elements without any structure. The film is overrated. Not horribly so, but it is not as good as people say it is. If you like experimental film then this might be a good one for you but those who prefer a traditional narrative form will not be pleased. Really, I can only recommend this for its glimpses at impoverished African-Americans in the 1970s. This is a first film and it shows.
Andres Z. gave it a10:
Around the seventies, when films like Annie Hall, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saturday Night Fever ruled the age, Charles Burnett silently crafted Killer of Sheep, his thesis film for UCLA. Thirty years it has eluded us—that is, until now. The result, although aging those thirty-years, is a masterpiece; an authentic and one of a kind piece of raw American poetry that simply and silently observes life in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles.
