Upon its release,
Black Friday received critical acclaim.
Rajeev Masand gave it a positive review and said it is "one of the best" films he'd watched in recent years. He wrote: "Please don't dismiss it as a boring art film, don't confuse it for a documentary, it's a dramatic feature that will rock your boat." Prithiviraj Hegde of
Rediff.com noted: "While the film stays true as a dark, brooding, evil tale, it is told with a droll, dry humour that brings a smile even as the protagonists head toward their final unforgiving denouement."
Anupama Chopra said the film had "several memorable sequences" but felt it was "static" as the screenplay does not allow the "characters to evolve or engage".
Taran Adarsh praised the actors' performances calling the film "hard-hitting" with "the courage to say what it says".
Nikhat Kazmi called it a "powerful, pointed and hard-hitting cinema that needs to be seen." Deepa Gahlot of
Sify called it a "fabulously crafted and superbly enacted film, but not stark enough to be documentary and not fictional enough to be a feature". She felt that Kashyap tried to justify Memon's actions in the film. Rahul Desai of
Film Companion wrote that the film is "more of a feeling—singularly shocking, stirring, cataclysmic, yet journalistic and depressingly objective, and one of the great achievements in Indian cinema".
Baradwaj Rangan mentioned in his review that the film is a series of "superbly-orchestrated sequences" saying the "only thing you could fault it for is that it doesn't know when to stop".
Namrata Joshi of
Outlook called it an "audacious, daring and explosive piece of cinema". In 2014,
Raja Sen called it Kashyap's "possibly best" and a "gripping, gloriously gritty film".
Khalid Mohamed called the film "defiantly uncompromising" and Kashyap's direction "unbelievably mature and searching". A review carried by
The Hindu cited it as "one of the finest Indian films of recent years".
The Hollywood Reporters Kirk Honeycutt compared the film's "journalistic inquiry into cataclysmic social and political events" to that of
Gillo Pontecorvo's
The Battle of Algiers. He noted the film is objective without any "lurid
sensationalism".
Maitland McDonagh felt the film "humanizes the bombers without excusing their actions". She also said it "owes more to films like
Munich than mainstream commercial spectacle". David Chute of
LA Weekly described it as "a rigorously naturalistic docudrama about a complex police investigation". Ethan Alter of
Film Journal International called it "a potent reminder that Indian filmmaking isn't limited to Bollywood super-productions".
Varietys Derek Elley called it a "fact-based procedural whose drama gets lost amid its analytical detail." A review carried by
Time Out called the film a "
post-9/11 food for thought and a vivid reminder not to get arrested in India, where the prisoners' bill of rights is very short". ==Legacy==