Metacritic reviews

We so often hear the lament that Hollywood films don't have characters we can care about that it's a real pleasure to note that all the people in this one feel fully developed. It'd be nice if there were more of a plot to go along with them.

A great cast can't quite pull City by the Sea out of the drink.

As a character study, City by the Sea is engaging. As a police thriller, it's not all there.

It's a run-of-the-mill cop thriller but also a gripping family drama. It is in the moments spent untangling the threads of troubled relationships that the movie is at its best.

Frances McDormand and Patti LuPone are solid as his girlfriend and ex-wife, respectively, and James Franco is just right as his wayward son. They're a talented team. Too bad the movie doesn't live up to their abilities.

That City by the Sea isn't laughed off the screen is testament to Caton-Jones' attention to actors and to some tightly written scenes.

Stumbles from restrained, fine-edged realism into blunt and muddy melodrama.

After the complex buildup of tensions, the last ten minutes of the movie are a comic-pathetic letdown: the subdued acting and the trash-strewn street scenes lead to nothing more striking than the kind of overexplicit clichés heard in mediocre TV dramas. Even De Niro's discipline and skill can't save lines that should never have been spoken in the first place. [9 September 2002, p.162]

The biggest shame in this movie is how it wastes Frances McDormand.

Yields the same sort of archetype and the usual results: De Niro's workmanlike in a dismayingly familiar role.