City By The Sea: Critic Reviews

It's a run-of-the-mill cop thriller but also a gripping family drama.

I like everything about it except it.

De Niro's workmanlike in a dismayingly familiar role.

A compendium of cliches about fathers and sons.

Ambitious, improbable and very violent cop drama.

The film ends up as shallow as the thankless love interest role Frances McDormand somehow agreed to play here.

Filmmaker Micahel Caton-Jones serves up an edgy drama filled with tragically flawed characters portrayed by Robert De Niro, James Franco and Frances MacDormand.

Caton-Jones ... understands that this story is not about how all the details work out, but about one man's heart and his slow awakening to moral responsibility.

If Rebel Without a Cause were told from the father's perspective, the result would probably be something like City by the Sea.

We watch an esteemed actor discovering new nuances. In turn, it's a sublime reminder of the qualities that made Robert De Niro great, not a gimmick.

O Ultimo Suspeito ganha forca ao tambem funcionar em uma esfera adicional: a do drama familiar.

...A showcase for excellent acting by some older, established performers and also some newer faces.

...a dark, brooding, depressing tale, unrelieved by the humor or irony the writer of a fictional story might have brought to the screen.

'Yet another exhausted Robert De Niro cop vehicle.'

A tough film that works better as a gripping character study than as a movie, but still is well worth the time.

Seeing De Niro back in drama is the high point of this uneven, fact-based film.

I hate wastefulness, and I'm sorry to say that this film wastes everything -- fine actors, an intriguing story, and viewers' time.

City by the sea es un recorrido por los vericuetos emocionales emanados de las malas relaciones padre-hijo y sus consecuencias

...little more than a well-acted television melodrama shot for the big screen.

Sombre, unpretentious and quietly moving.

...worth checking out for the performances.

The final ten minutes is enough to extinguish my fire for the rest.

For me, acting rarely makes or breaks a movie, but there's so much heart invested in the characters at the centre of this film that I found myself captivated, for just a while, by the troubles of those people up on the screen.

The ending is quite refreshing, as a movie that has contrasted the past and the present optimistically looks ahead to the future.

a provocative and gutsy thriller, yet it's hard to escape the feeling that it brings up far more issues ... than it can possibly deal with