David Sterritt of "The Christian Science Monitor" bluntly referred to the film as "Both a blood-churning war movie and a mind-stirring antiwar movie, focusing not on guts and glory but on the stark realities of real battlefield experience." Critic Ken Fox of "TV Guide" was impressed with Gitai's film calling it "Raw" and "completely devoid of the things one expects from a war film: No heroes, no flag-waving, no screeds against man killing man." He exclaimed, ""Kippur" is about the actual work of combat." Writer Ella Taylor for "LA Weekly" viewed "Kippur" as a "radically different – more nakedly autobiographical, more naturalistic, more forgiving – from Gitai's highly conceptual and stylized body of work, there are clear thematic continuities." Left unimpressed though, was critic Michael Rechtshaffen of "The Hollywood Reporter" who wrote that the film was "A patience-trying docudrama almost completely devoid of any trace of narrative structure or even defined characters." Critic Leonard Maltin referred to the film as being "unique" and "a painstaking, grueling picture of war."