The review for Black Coal Thin, Ice in Variety starts with quite an accolade: "The spirits of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain course through Black Coal, Thin Ice, a bleak but powerful, carefully controlled detective thriller in which — as with all the best noirs — there are no real heroes or villains, only various states of compromise. A most curious hybrid of genre movie and art film, drenched in neon and wintry industrial bleakness, this is the third feature by the gifted mainland Chinese director Diao Yinan."
The film has all the key ingredients – a femme fatale and a no-nonsense detective which again struck a chord in Variety: (In the 1940s Hollywood version, Lana Turner or Ida Lupino would have made a good fit, while it’s easy to imagine Bogart or Mitchum in the detective role.)
Similarly, the reviewer from CineVue was impressed: Jingsong Dong's cinematography is sublime. The film looks so beautiful. And neither is it a case of visual grandstanding for the sake of cinema's sake. There is subtlety at play that is quietly impressive. Whether it's a seasonal transition via a road tunnel - from clammy summer to the dead of winter - or faces bathed in coloured electric light as they travel on a Ferris wheel in the dark. Mixing daytime exteriors and pastel tones with night-time garish neon, brings out not only neat pictorial contrasts, but also the rich poetic symbolism that envelopes the characters in their search for a second chance and an escape from the past.