 Burnett's self-professed influences are Jean Renoir, Basil Wright, and Federico Fellini, all of whom exemplify the tender, humane and compassionate qualities for which Burnett has been praised, qualities intensely present in "Killer of Sheep".Critic Andrew O'Hehir, noting the strong influences of Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, 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.