Asphalt City
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: March 29, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
10
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Arizona RepublicKaely MonahanMar 27, 2024
What Sauvaire shows in these films is the intense human emotions that infuse these dramatic action movies. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 27, 2024
With cinematographer David Ungaro providing hand-held docudrama work in saturated colors, “Asphalt City” is bleak and heavy-handed, yet we get the feeling a lot of paramedics in major cities would say it’s not all that far from the harsh realities of the job. Read full review
67
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossMay 21, 2023
Black Flies offers plenty of nihilistic entertainment. But don’t be too tempted to look for any depth in a film far too comfortable in the formulaic confines. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyMar 29, 2024
Perhaps paradoxically, it’s when the film is at its most quiet that it’s also most persuasive. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMar 29, 2024
There’s style and skill to spare in Asphalt City, but the movie also feels like a victim of the very numbness and emotional emptiness it seeks to expose. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 21, 2023
Certainly not free of clichés, Black Flies actually gains an added soul-sickness from being stuck with them as everyday realities. Read full review
50
Screen RantFelipe RangelMar 29, 2024
Asphalt City might falter at times, but seeing Cross try to adapt to all the things happening to him makes for an interesting watch. Read full review
45
TheWrapSteve PondMay 21, 2023
Impressive in its single-mindedness, this is nonetheless a movie that dares you to try and like it – and most likely, few will take Sauvaire up on that dare. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 21, 2023
Black Flies is too enraptured by the violence it finds in the margins of New York City to meaningfully interrogate the mental stress of healing it; too focused on the constant buzz of sirens and death to rescue anything more nuanced from those layers of white noise. Read full review
40
The New York TimesNatalia WinkelmanMar 28, 2024
This jittery drama wants viewers to appreciate the unique burdens facing emergency medical workers. Its approach to achieving this goal, however, involves a profusion of overly literal allusions to the paramedics as arbiters of life and death. Read full review
40
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 21, 2023
The flamboyantly heavy, life’s-a-bitch-and-then-it-ends drama of Black Flies isn’t much fun to sit through, but I think that’s ultimately because the movie, for all its grungy surface authenticity, is a bit of a fake. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 21, 2023
No doubt Black Flies wants to honour the heroism and sacrifice of paramedics — the end credits include a statistic about the alarming rate of suicide in the profession — but it often dehumanises the people in desperate need of their help. Sauvaire seems more concerned with one group’s suffering than the other. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 21, 2023
By the end, Black Flies leaves the viewer battered, bruised and bleeding out on the sidewalk, but never fully captivated Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 21, 2023
There are some strident cliches alongside redundant self-harming machismo in this sub-Schraderesque movie about New York paramedics. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezMar 26, 2024
Shove everything into the meat grinder of cynicism and, in the end, your insights come to feel purely incidental. Read full review
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