End of Watch (2012) [Blu-ray]
Crime | Drama | Thriller
From the writer of Training Day comes a gripping, action-packed cop drama starring Academy Award nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peņa. In their mission to abide by their oath to serve and protect, Officers Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala
(Peņa) have formed a powerful brotherhood to ensure they both go home at the end of watch. But nothing can prepare them for the violent backlash that happens after they pull over the members of a notorious drug cartel for a routine traffic stop. Seen from
the point of view of the officers, gang members, surveillance cameras, dash cams and citizens caught in the line of fire, a 360° perspective creates a gritty, compassionate and intense portrait of the city's darkest streets, and the brave men and women
patrolling them.
Storyline: Shot documentary-style, this film follows the daily grind of two young police officers in LA who are partners and friends, and what happens when they meet criminal forces greater than themselves.
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Kenneth Brown on January 10, 2013 -- End of Watch is popping up on a number of "Best of 2012" lists, and I'll be the first to admit for good reason. Or two good reasons rather: Jake Gyllenhaal
and Michael Peņa, both of whom deliver unmistakably outstanding performances. So for those of you already glaring at the movie score looming over my writeup, itching to retreat to the forum and complain that my take on the film is "suspect" (always my
favorite nonsensical charge), let's shake hands and pretend the review ends right here, with the insinuation that Watch deserves much of the praise it's received. Or perhaps instead we'll admit, just this once, that the great thing about cinema is
that no two people have the exact same response to the same movie, proceed as if internet civility is a given and take a few minutes to discuss what doesn't work in writer/director David Ayer's fractured POV cop drama, which for me is quite a lot. Agreed?
I'm excited...
I am the police, and I'm here to arrest you. You've broken the law. I did not write the law. I may disagree with the law but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy. Nothing you do will stop me from
placing you in a steel cage with gray bars. If you run away I will chase you. If you fight me I will fight back. If you shoot at me I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a
gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who are the same as me. They will lay down their lives for me and I them. We stand watch
together. The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.
End of Watch begins as something of a found footage film, offering a proper introduction to crime and punishment in South Central Los Angeles courtesy of LAPD officers Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal), a former Marine, and family man Miguel Zavala (Peņa),
Brian's partner and closest friend. Taylor it seems is taking a film studies course and has decided to document the rigors of his profession. But Ayer only sticks to such trappings for a few minutes and soon incorporates a variety of other sources: lapel
and cruiser cams, street and security cameras, videos captured on gangsters' cell phones (because every good drug dealer documents their crimes), shots straight out of a first-person shooter, black and white filters, night vision cameras, shotgun-mounted
mini-rigs and, more and more often, to increasingly distracting ends, the more artful, disembodied, ever-omniscient camerawork of the filmmakers.
The erratic points of view are jarring, so much so that Ayer's decision to run with a found footage premise, even in part, is all the more baffling. Why make such a fuss about Taylor's cameras? Why have him jump through hoops to justify lugging his
personal recording devices everywhere, among them his own equipment, which is against regulation? The answer lies in Ayer's desire to shed light on a life in the day of a real LAPD officer in South Central LA; the horror, the carnage, the abuse, the truly
shocking offenses witnessed week in and week out. Other directors have accomplished as much -- or more -- without resorting to burdensome gimmicks, among them Ayer himself. Training Day was gritty Hollywood spectacle, yes, but it was gripping
Hollywood spectacle from start to finish, with a cohesive through-thread and engrossing character arcs. By contrast, End of Watch is peppered with powerful, gut-wrenching scenes undermined each and every time Ayer shifts views or abandons them
altogether, inadvertently calling attention to the camera crew behind the reality curtain.
If the film's only sin were found footage discord, though, I wouldn't have come away so dissatisfied. Taylor and Zavala are overbearing hosts at times, one-upping each other's testosterone output whenever Ayer demands Gyllenhaal and Pena provide momentum
on their own accord. Their fellow officers are plucked straight out of chintzy '90s cop shows too. There's the tenacious tomboy next door (Cody Horn), the stiff no-nonsense boyscout (David Harbour), the fierce latina (America Ferrera), the comically
squirrelly, tragically doomed rookie (Kristy Wu), the threat-leveling sergeant (Frank Grillo), and the detached but chummy captain (Jaime FitzSimons). It's really that cookie cutter. Then there are the woefully inept gangsters that eventually come gunning
for the LAPD officers, easily four of the most obnoxious, unbearable thugs to sully a modern cop drama. The tough-talking, chest-puffing actors over-playing Big Evil and his lackeys are out of their depth, their snarly dialogue is downright laughable, and
their plan to take out Taylor and Zavala devolves into an improbably executed ambush driven by screenwriter hackery and spoiled by the sudden intrusion of over-the-top action.
And don't get me started on the hit the drug cartel puts out on our favorite LAPD do-gooders; a kill order the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency records during a surveillance mission and does precisely nothing about, either to
warn Taylor and Zavala or the LAPD that two of their officers are in mortal danger. For a film that claims to cling so tightly to authenticity, End of Watch certainly takes a sharp right turn into genre convention, and with a half-hour to spare. It
doesn't help that after a devastating blow and a heartwrenching penultimate scene, Ayer closes the film with an inconsequential, inexplicably timed flashback that's meant to encapsulate Taylor and Zavala's friendship but only diminishes the impact of
everything that comes before it.
Still with me? Right about now, someone somewhere has stopped wondering why my score is so low and started wondering why it's so high. Simple: for all its brambles and undergrowth, there's still a compelling, almost masterfully conceived drama nestled in
End of Watch's weeds. Gyllenhaal and Peņa carry the film and do so with such dedication and commitment to Taylor and Zavala's integrity as fully realized characters that it's difficult to focus on anything other than their performances. And the
loves of the officers' lives -- Taylor's new girlfriend Janet (Anna Kendrick) and Zavala's pregnant wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) -- only make the leading men more compelling. Kendrick and Martinez are so good I wish they had more screentime, and
their brief but intimate scenes with Gyllenhaal and Peņa elevate the ensuing stakes exponentially. There are also the calls Taylor and Zavala respond to -- a car chase that ends in blood, a domestic disturbance, a missing child report, a house fire, a
hunch that uncovers a human trafficking ring, a house call turned mass murder crime scene and more -- that make up the bulk of the film and knocked the wind of me every time. It's in those two areas, Taylor and Zavala's personal lives and challenging
calls, that End of Watch excels. If Ayer hadn't focused so much of his attention elsewhere, it would have easily made its way onto my "Best of the Year" list too.
[CSW] -3.3- What the film is about is the life of two cops who decide to film/document their experiences while on the job, they encounter some pretty rough stuff while working in South Central. If you can put up with the shaky cam, which I'm generally
dislike, the story itself is fairly good. Having grown up around cops I didn't find it as surprising as most people might, now having said that, some of the predicaments and their reaction to them were truly noteworthy. I could take or leave most of the
partners' banter but as I said before their predicaments and reaction to them were truly noteworthy. A once-is-enough but do-not-miss movie.
[V4.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box 10/10.
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