Metacritic reviews

Nerve-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.

Ultimately, 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.

Easily one of the year's best films and one of the best ever in the well-worn cop genre.

The 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.

As 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.

In 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.

By 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.

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

It 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.

End of Watch is pure frat-boy fantasy, the video game to Southland's great American novel.