The film depicts the culture of urban African-Americans in Los Angeles' Watts district in a style often likened to Italian neorealism.

Critic Dana Stevens described its plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film.

[10] Burnett also kept a stable job while Killer of Sheep was being shot, spending his time working at an agency reading scripts and synopses.

[13] In 2009, a still from the scene, showing one of the boys mid-jump, was reproduced in red tint and used as the cover of rapper Mos Def's album The Ecstatic.

According to Complex magazine's Dale Eisinger, the "subtle and still-moving" cover has a "hazy, dream-like movement, appearing as a non-narrative, loose collection of vignettes that are tangentially fascinating and incredibly powerful", while reflecting the ideas of cultural justice and global inequality present throughout Mos Def's work.

"[15] Critics and scholars have likened the film to the work of Italian neorealist directors, particularly Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, for its documentary aesthetic and use of mostly non-professional, on-location actors.

Burnett has also been compared to Yasujirō Ozu for his strong sense of composition, Stanley Kubrick for his sharp ear for juxtaposing popular music with images, John Cassavetes for his knack for coaxing natural performances from amateur actors, and Robert Altman for his interest in the minutiae of human interaction.

Critic Andrew O'Hehir, noting the strong influences of Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini,[16] and Satyajit Ray, said, "It's hard to overemphasize how strange and ambitious and completely out of context it was for a black urban filmmaker with no money and no reputation to make that kind of movie in 1977.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 21, 2008, Turner Classic Movies presented the world broadcast premiere of the film as part of a night-long marathon of Burnett's work.