The "TV Guide" review stated "similarity to Edward James Olmos' "American Me", in which a tormented drug dealer travels the same route through prison society as Miklo. The principal difference between the two films is that "Bound By Honor" is by far the glossier effort, relentlessly picturesque in the seamlessly anesthetized manner of mainstream Hollywood films." Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum for the Chicago Reader wrote that this "ugly three-hour snoozefest is apparently supposed to do for East Los Angeles Chicanos what the Godfather movies did for New York mafiosi…" Roger Ebert wrote "The East Los Angeles milieu and some of the characters seem familiar, because some of the same ground was covered by "American Me"... "Bound by Honor" covers similar material in a less passionate and finally less meaningful way." He gave the film 2 stars out of 4.