Blood Done Sign My Name
Metascore
49 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 16
  3. Negative: 1 out of 16
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    The movie tells this story in a traditional, straightforward way. No fancy footwork. No chewing the scenery. Meat and potatoes, you could say, but it's thoughtful and moving.
  2. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    75
    May not be great cinema, but it nonetheless deserves attention.
  3. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    “Blood” may carry us into the past, but the unhappy effects linger today, like pollution darkening a sky that never turned completely blue.
  4. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Sam Adams
    67
    Draws attention to a little-known chapter in the history of the civil-rights movement, but it doesn’t do much to pull that moment into the present, or to pull the audience into the past.
  5. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    63
    The actors do a lot to dimensionalize the material. Parker's Chavis is especially sharp, creating a man with a subtly burning fuse.
  6. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    60
    Though it can't quite transcend its filmmaker's earnest intentions, this solemn history lesson offers several powerful moments.
  7. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Frank Scheck
    50
    Suffers from an awkward, plodding structure that robs it of much of its dramatic effect.
  8. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    50
    Despite its earnestness and valuable lessons, however, "Blood" feels a little like preaching to the choir.
  9. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    50
    A curious, somewhat ungainly movie. But it is also rich and fascinating. At times you think you are watching a clumsy stage pageant superimposed on a documentary; it’s so stiff, and yet at the same time so real.
  10. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    Jeb Stuart directed, his well-rounded portrait of the community partly undermined by the slack editing; with Rick Schroder as the minister and Michael Rooker as the defense attorney.
  11. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: David Fear
    40
    You can’t deny the inspirational qualities of the story or Parker’s screen presence, any more than you could accuse the film of subtlety or of masking its conspicuous pro-Christian agenda.
  12. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Tim Cogshell
    40
    Ultimately, however, the movie is about the fact that there was a civil rights movement at all, and incidents like the murder of Dickie Marrow necessitated that movement--deep into the 1970s and beyond.
  13. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Melissa Anderson
    40
    An earnest, if inert, civil rights docudrama clearly shot on the cheap (many of the wigs appear to have been borrowed from the Black Dynamite set).
  14. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Robert Abele
    40
    The material gets away from him (Stuart) quickly, leaving emotionally forced, clunky filmmaking that feels simultaneously rushed and dawdling, like a chopped-down TV miniseries. (It even has natural commercial breaks.)
  15. Variety
    Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
    40
    Comes off as a painfully old-fashioned, flatly directed exercise in passionless historical reenactment.
  16. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    25
    Rolls out stiff clichés to tell a familiar story of racial injustice in the South.

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