End of Watch

Directed by David Ayer

R

***

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“End of Watch is a visceral story of beat cops that is rare in its sensitivity, rash in its violence, and raw in its humor,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. Written and directed by the screenwriter of Training Day, it gets into a patrol car with two L.A. beat officers and makes their work and friendship feel “distinctive and street worthy.” In few other police dramas have I heard two men “speak to each other with as much natural affinity as these two,” said Wesley Morris in The Boston Globe. “For hours,” I could watch Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña drive around and “mix it up with the rest of the cast”—if it weren’t for all the handheld camera footage. The conceit is that Peña’s character is making a film about life on the job, but it just makes this movie look cheap. Still, the underappreciated Peña “gives one of the performances of his career,” said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Aided by supporting actors Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez, the leads make this “one of the best police movies in recent years.”