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80The action and the chemistry is stronger than the story, because Gyllenhaal and Peña are good. In that respect End of Watch works better as a series of vignettes held together somewhat loosely by a larger story.
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67End of Watch is more than the sum of its parts, though; it ends on a downbeat note, but that's something I've come to expect from Ayer.
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63The camera is just everywhere, from the point of view of everything. When I left the movie the other night, people complained of seasickness.
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80Easily one of the year's best films and one of the best ever in the well-worn cop genre.
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100One of the best police movies in recent years, a virtuoso fusion of performances and often startling action.
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63The drawback of the film's visual approach, however, is a considerable one. The relentless first-person shooting in End of Watch - figurative and literal - is less about YouTube factuality than it is about Xbox gaming reconfigured for the movies.
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83I wish that the Mexican drug cartel subplot was not so overwrought and Oliver Stone-ish, and the decision to shoot much of the film "Cops"-style is also problematic. But the film puts you right inside an everyday inferno and, to its credit, doesn't turn down the heat.
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80It'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.
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91Nerve-rattling in the best way, the sharp, visceral urban police procedural End of Watch is one of the best American cop movies I've seen in a long time.
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58By virtue of its style and high stakes scenario, End of Watch is impressively tense, but then so are most episodes of "COPS," which don't suffer from the forced melodrama found here.
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80A visceral story of beat cops that is rare in its sensitivity, rash in its violence and raw in its humor.
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Sep 20, 201275The two cops are cocky and funny and young, and it still takes a good half hour to accept that they may be as forthright and dedicated to their jobs as they appear to be.
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80If Ayer had taken as much care with his bad guys as he does with his leads (and their deftly sketched wives and colleagues, played by Anna Kendrick, America Ferrera and Frank Grillo, among others), he might have crafted a seamless picture.
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Sep 22, 201280There's nothing in David Ayer's cop drama End of Watch that you haven't already seen, but the film has moments so riveting that you might not care too much.
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75America Ferrara ("Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants'') turns in an image-changing role as a tough lesbian officer who develops a grudging admiration for our heroes.
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80End of Watch is one thriller where the adrenaline rush, considerable as it is, is almost always put in the service of character. Happily, the character on display turns out to be considerable, too.
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88David Ayer, the writer of "Training Day," director of "Street Kings," writer/director of "Harsh Times," does not make movies about princesses with witchy curses, about yuppie commitment-phobes, about talking plush toys. His territory is narrow, but he owns it: cops, in Los Angeles.
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88The problem with End of Watch, a gripping police drama, is director David Ayer's stylistic decision to shoot nearly the entire movie tripod-less. Or, to put it another way, there's a whole lotta shakin' going on.
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63End of Watch gives you the savage whoosh of being on a job that can get you killed. Sins of cop clichés can be forgiven when a movie pays honest tribute to police on the line.
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100Mythic, thrilling and brilliantly made motion picture.
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100The best scenes are filmed inside the cruiser, dashboard shots that face inward instead of out, catching Gyllenhaal and Peña in moments so playful and true they make all other buddy cops look bogus by comparison.
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38End of Watch is pure frat-boy fantasy, the video game to Southland's great American novel.
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0End of Watch is a repellent movie, first for its shaky-cam conceit rendering much of the action incomprehensible, and finally for seeking to entertain viewers through the thuggish execution of a police officer.
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58Gyllenhaal and Peña's relationship, a sort of heterosexual love affair, is depicted with a sense of tenderness and care that does not extend to the cartoonish villains that dominate the film's lackluster final act.
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63No doubt, these twin saviours are a likeable tandem, and they bear their cross lightly. Still, End of Watch suffers from no end of sanctimony. Sainthood is all well and fine but it ain't drama and, on screen at least, the question cries out: Where's a corrupt cop when you need him?
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40Despite the violence and procedural detail, this is about as gritty as Dixon of Dock Green.
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70In the last 15 minutes of the film, he burns up some of the credibility he established by not pushing extreme situations too far earlier on.
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70A muscular, maddening exploitation movie embellished with art-house style and anchored by solid performances.
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80Ayer should have dropped the movie-within-a-movie, which is confusing in an unproductive way -- we share the men's point of view without it. [24 Sept. 2012, p. 98]
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50The 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.
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40It almost becomes comical to count the number of "who's holding the camera now?" reverse shots that the filmmaker haphazardly inserts to propel the story forward. Such visual ineptitude, like much else in this tediously cocky enterprise, is downright criminal.
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60Forceful and arresting, Ayer's follow-up to "Harsh Times" and "Street Kings" sees him confidently playing to his strengths.
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75Unlike many action thrillers where the viewer is fairly certain that no real harm can come to the protagonists, such is never the case here. In this gritty ride-along, we sense that anything can happen, which adds to the propulsive momentum of a riveting story.
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80Ultimately, the mock-doc device works because Gyllenhaal and Pena so completely reinvent themselves in-character. Instead of wearing the roles like costumes or uniforms, they let the job seep into their skin, a feat without which "End of Watch's" pseudo-reality never would have worked.
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Sep 19, 201280As social insight, End of Watch is useless, but as engrossing entertainment, it's irresistible, thanks to Ayer's gift for dialogue, the relentless pacing set by film editor Dody Dorn, and gorgeous performances by Gyllenhaal and Peña.
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50Shallow down inside, End of Watch is a music-video Frappuccino of quick cuts, sparkling banter, serial crises, grisly violence and tongue-jerk profanity. But the film is exciting, in its manipulative way, and exhausting.
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63It's powerful stuff, but I almost felt like I needed an intermission.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 51 out of 62
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Mixed: 4 out of 62
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Negative: 7 out of 62
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10
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This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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10