[1] The film begins with Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote: "A riot is the language of the unheard",[6] which Catherine Bray of Variety says "intelligently informs and underpins the entire pic" as it "grapples sincerely with the cultural context of a wave of riots that broke out across England in the summer of 2011, in the wake of the fatal police shooting of London resident Mark Duggan.

"[7] Picking up the story in the period after media coverage of it waned, Amponsah's film sheds light on the environment from which Mark Duggan came.

Focusing on two of his childhood friends, Marcus Knox-Hooke and Kurtis Henville, against the backdrop of their home on Broadwater Farm — an estate that notoriously was the scene of a 1985 riot triggered by tensions between the police and local black people — the film follows the journey of the two young black men over 24 months, until the 2012 verdict that found Duggan to have been "lawfully killed".

The film has been generally well received, being given four-star reviews by Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian,[15] Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard[16] and Emma Simmonds of The List, among others.

"[21] Grace Hetherington in her review in The Metropolist gives The Hard Stop a five-star rating and observes: "Amponsah wants the audience to connect with Marcus and Kurtis not just as subsidiaries of Mark Duggan’s character but as representatives of their own culture and the place they call home....

This film cleverly highlights that the riots did not initially start from hatred, but from a heart of frustration and from a seed of disdain between residents of Broadwater Farm estate and the police....