Metacritic reviews

Vital, thoughtful, and deeply personal, first-timer Darius Clark Monroe's autobiographical doc stands as a testament to the power of movies to stir empathy.

Shot over the course of several years, Evolution of a Crime is often rough-hewn in its execution, but it's deeply moving nonetheless.

The entire film could start to feel like a feature-length justification, but Darius manages to sidestep that path by never letting himself off the hook.

Raising significant questions about the psychological effects of poverty on young children, this unsettlingly direct stab at atonement feels genuine.

What's missing is a sense of how Monroe, seemingly a law-abiding young man before his family's financial dark days, suddenly went from being a go-along-to-get-along type to a budding criminal mastermind.