[5] A mixed review in Variety praised the cinematography by Patrice Lucien Cochet but "That there’s an authenticity to the results may be unsurprising, but it’s still impressively packaged into an atmospheric, technically well-crafted whole.

On the downside, it’s also no surprise that the weakest aspect here is a somewhat half-hearted attempt to impose dramatic structure on the more anecdotal, personality-driven stuff of life itself.

"[2] Keith Watson of Slant Magazine reviewed the film more favorably, and, while noting some negative aspects, wrote, "The director's style may be all prose, no poetry, but his stripped-down approach nevertheless renders these messy, unglamorous lives with an abiding sense of dignity.

"A dreary pileup of hard-luck monologues and run-down locations, Mark Webber’s “Flesh and Blood” straddles the line between fact and fiction with exhausting earnestness and a fatal dearth of narrative."

Again praising Cochet’s "warm cinematography", Catsoulis summarized the film as "too much like an act of therapeutic cleansing to engage much beyond those involved in its making.