Having grown up as a teen on the troubled streets of South Central Los Angeles, writer and director David Ayer is fast becoming the best chronicler of the crime, social injustice and random violence that forever plagues the city of angels. Since writing the screenplays for Training Day and Dark Blue, Ayer has turned to directing with the underrated Harsh Times, Street Kings and now End of Watch.

End of Watch follows two L.A. patrol cops Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) as they cruise around the streets and apprehend various criminal low lives. Taylor and Zavala stumble on to something much bigger though and find themselves marked for death by a Mexican drug cartel. Along the way we learn of their hopes, dreams and the loves in their life and how close the two of them are.

There really is pretty much nothing to the...