Though successful, "500 Years Later" received mixed reviews from critics regarding content and presentation. Dan Schindel, a documentary reviewer, calls the film "The Malcolm X to the MLK of the average doc that covers African-related material" and offers many examples of the extremity of the film. The article "Destroying the Horrors of 500 Years" by Attahiru Kawu-Bala praised the film as an "articulate multi-dimensional African world perspective" with regard to the effects of African Diaspora. Kawu-Bala argued that the techniques used in the documentary did not rely on emotion and instead used facts and truth to build a case from an African standpoint. By contrast, Curt Holman recognized the film's righteousness, but believed "a more informative film would have been more effective." He found the video to be emotionally charged and, at times, overly obvious. According to Holman, the emotional biases sometimes overshadowed the factual content.