Movie Review: NIGHT PATROL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: January 16th, 2026 / 02:20 AM

NIGHT PATROL movie poster | ©2026 RLJE Films/Shudder

Rating: R
Stars: Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Freddie Gibbs, RJ Cyler, Keenon Dequan “YG” Ray Jackson, Nicki Micheaux, Flying Lotus, Phil Brooks, Dermot Mulroney, Jon Oswald, Nick Gillie, Zuri Reed
Writers: Shaye Ogbonna & Ryan Prows & Tim Cairo & Jake Gibson
Director: Ryan Prows
Distributor: RLJE Films/Shudder
Release Date: January 16, 2026

By now, it is known that there really are, unfortunately, gangs operating within police and sheriff’s departments across the U.S. These gangs are largely protected from investigation and prosecution by virtue of their badges, which leads to a lot of illegality on the part of sworn law enforcement. There are news articles and books and TV shows and movies about this phenomenon.

NIGHT PATROL puts an extra layer on this by introducing a supernatural element. “Night Patrol” is the name of a special LAPD anti-gang task force that operates primarily after dark. They get into an all-out war in the Colonial Courts housing project with both the Bloods and the Crips.

In reality, the Crips and the Bloods are street gangs that are often at war with one another. That’s also the case, at least initially, in NIGHT PATROL.

The film, directed by Ryan Prows and scripted by Shaye Ogbonna & Prows & Tim Cairo & Jake Gibson, starts with a shirtless young Black man shackled to a desk in a police interrogation room. This is Wazi (RJ Cyler). He has what appears to be a piece of metal sticking out of the right side of his ribcage.

Wazi is being questioned by unsympathetic Captain Freeman (Nick Gillie), who wants a signature on a report of what happened.

We flash back to some nights earlier. Wazi, on his bicycle, rides to meet up in a relatively isolated spot with his girlfriend Primo (Zuri Reed) for some intimacy in her bright red ragtop sports car. Wazi would like to get more serious and has brought his grandmother’s antique African ring to prove it.

But Primo wants to keep things casual, especially since Wazi is a Crip, she’s a Blood, and their respective families might start shooting if they found out about the affair.

Then a police car pulls up and tells the couple to exit their vehicle. There are two white officers, plus a large white man not in uniform. The senior officer (Phil Brooks) tells the less seasoned officer Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long), “If you want into Night Patrol, this is it.” A disturbing incident ensues.

NIGHT PATROL is thereafter broken into three chapters. Chapter I, “LAPD,” gives us more insight into the main characters we’ve already met – Wazi and Hawkins – and introduces us to others, including ambitious Black cop and former Crip Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler), Wazi’s formidable, magic-practicing mother Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux), and local Bloods leader Bornelius (Freddie Gibbs), who is also Primo’s brother.

Chapter II, “Night Patrol,” explains more about that secretive organization, and Chapter III, “The Courts,” goes big on bloody action.

Prows is at his best navigating combat, both in shocking brief blasts and big battle sequences with gunfire, stabbings and explosions.

NIGHT PATROL takes a dim view of white cops (we don’t really see any white civilians, apart from a few high school students early on). Long plays the one ambivalent white character – whose seemingly contradictory behavior is eventually well-explained – with well-modulated nuance.

It’s unclear if some of the Black characters are meant to come off quite as badly as they do. Carr is introduced in a splashy fashion that makes an impression. We get that he’s brash and freewheeling, but it’s hard to tell if the filmmakers understand that what Carr does in this sequence is not only against departmental policy, but borderline sexual abuse (not out of lust, but as a demonstration of humiliation) that will probably have the target in therapy for the rest of his life.

Consequently, we’re still sitting there slack-jawed as we begin to understand that Carr is on of our heroes, who is evidently just meant to be brash and a little heedless, as opposed to someone who needs tons of training and counseling himself (starting with, “Here is why you should never do this”) before he’s allowed anywhere near civilians, especially minors.

Wazi is disengaged and lacks focus, and part of the suspense is whether or not he can rise to the occasion. We know from the opening that he survives, so clearly he’s got some mettle, but his character development is a bit rocky.

NIGHT PATROL overall feels uneven. Part of this is likely due to the filmmakers’ desire to continually surprise us. They do, but at the cost of allowing us to invest in any one aspect of all the things that are happening. Yes, we side with the victims here, but that’s more due to reflexive empathy than anything the film does to humanize them as individuals.

As a parable, there’s no reason NIGHT PATROL can’t work (see SINNERS), but even in a police department that has had racism has been a much-publicized real-world issue, an explicitly self-proclaimed all-white task force seems like it would raise a few official eyebrows. NIGHT PATROL isn’t required to show us exactly how this works (especially in image-conscious Los Angeles), but it doesn’t repurpose the time not used doing that to deepen anything else.

Micheaux puts real force into her powerful character, Fowler gives Carr the requisite ambition and intelligence (that introductory stunt aside), Cyler handles Wazi’s turns gracefully, and Brooks is properly unpleasant as the Night Patrol’s second in command.

NIGHT PATROL is intermittently intriguing, and works as a shoot-‘em-up, but it overall seems unequipped to fully deal with the serious themes it presents.

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