This abrasive and brilliant Los Angeles cop drama contains two exceptional male-lead performances.

| Feb 27, 2023

This is the thinking man's action movie, a cop flick that takes us off the beaten track. Above all, though, it is a bromance.

| Aug 11, 2017

Ayer and his cast appear to have so convincingly nailed the way these characters talk and act that you might not even notice the film slipping from workaday grit into out-and-out myth.

Full Review | Jan 8, 2013

The actors, both excellent, get right into Ayer's groove. So by the time we arrive at the unsparing climax, we really know and care about these guys.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2013

Gyllenhaal and Pena are after a lived-in camaraderie and a street-level realism. Pena, especially, succeeds; you buy him every second.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 8, 2013

The performances here are so sharp that viewers may wish End of Watch has been shot by someone who knew how to find the right point of view for a scene and leave it there.

| Jan 8, 2013

Ayers's warmest film to date finds meaning and depth in its "I love you, man" exchanges and rarely goes too long without staging some daring detective work and videogame ultraviolence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 24, 2012

One to watch, but through narrowed eyes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2012

Despite the violence and procedural detail, this is about as gritty as Dixon of Dock Green.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 22, 2012

Some fiction movies knock politely on the door to gain attention, others kick it in.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 22, 2012

Its spiky authenticity and blunt moral power feel unimpeachable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 22, 2012

visual vibrancy always trumps verisimilitude - shakicam's reality effects are repeatedly problematised by the question of which character is filming what at any given time, especially when the answer, at least sometimes, would appear to be 'no one'.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2012

It's a collection of cop-movie clichés but presented with sufficient flair and strong performances that the ride is enough, even if it's on rails.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2012

Intermittently enjoyable but incredibly frustrating.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 2, 2012

Jumpy and exciting.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2012

The ingredients in [this] cop drama are as routine as a traffic stop. But director/writer David Ayer (who wrote the electric good-cop/bad-cop Training Day) makes it work.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2012

Both actors are marvelous -- this may be the most nuanced and far-ranging performance Gyllenhaal has ever given -- and writer-director David Ayer is unapologetically frank about the dangers these men face.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 21, 2012

I'm not sure who appointed David Ayer poet laureate for the LAPD, but at least he takes the job seriously.

| Sep 21, 2012

Gyllenhaal and Peña work together like a well-oiled machine, as if they really had spent months or years in each other's company. Their dialogue feels raw and spontaneous.

| Sep 21, 2012

End of Watch suffers from no end of sanctimony.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 21, 2012