Synopsis
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
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Cast
- Henry G. SandersStan
- Kaycee MooreStan's Wife
- Charles BracyBracy
- Angela BurnettStan's Daughter
- Eugene CherryEugene
- Jack DrummondStan's Son
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Reader
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. - 100
Village Voice
Killer of Sheep is an urban pastoral--an episodic series of scenes that are sweet, sardonic, deeply sad, and very funny. - 100
Entertainment Weekly
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. - 100
Premiere
Burnett creates an insistently poetic, devastatingly ironic world and work. - 100
Christian Science Monitor
A lyrical, yet intensely rooted, tragic vision. - 100
TV Guide Magazine
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. - 100
The New York Times
The result is an American masterpiece, independent to the bone. - 90
Slate
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."
