End of Watch

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Though Ayer’s screenplay resorts to some of the clichés we associate with the genre, the performances are so strong that we hardly care.

There are countless buddy-cop action movies, but this one really is a bit different.

With throat-grabbing immediacy, giddily frenetic cop thriller End of Watch thrusts you into the front seat of an LA patrol car.

It holds up, it's just a good movie...