Film: End of Watch

Director: David Ayer
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Streaming
Grade: A-

I can't call this film underrated, because I recall it actually got a pretty positive release. But I was not prepared for this movie walking in. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly--a traditional cop story, where a good street cop discovers there's more corruption going on in the department than he originally thought, perhaps--but I was hugely wrapped in what I got.

The film does follow a good street cop--two of them really, played by Jake Gyllenhaal (as Brian Taylor) and Michael Pena (as Mike Zavala), and it is definitely thanks to them that the movie really works. If the film is about anything other than the trials of being a police officer, it is about their friendship and partnership, and because there is no driving plot (more on that in a moment) Gyllenhaal and Pena are given opportunities to simply interact and play off one another. Their friendship seems real, their partnership feels authentic, and so when they tease one another, or protect one another, or fear for one another, the stakes feel real. The two characters have extremely likable personalities (I was surprised that a few times during the movie I actually laughed out loud), and as the film goes on our desire for them to succeed and our fear for them both grow accordingly. 

As I mentioned, I was expecting a typical cop story, and though this hits most of the traditional cop notes, it also feels like a truer attempt at portraying the life of the street officer. Zavala and Taylor find themselves in the middle of big cases--human trafficking, a torture and execution drug-related crime scene--and yet they don't deal with the cases after those initial encounters. They hand it over to higher ranking officers, fill out paperwork, and then head back out on patrol. In the meantime we get pieces of their personal lives as well--a growing relationship with a girl for Taylor, a growing family for Zavala--but those are also given to us in pieces, the background to the hours the two men spend riding the streets of South Central Los Angeles together. We see moments of heroism and moments (though definitely fewer moments) of questionable behavior. We see cops who are washed up, and we see cops who have climbed the ladder successfully. In all the world the two inhabit feels full, and it feels like we only see a slice of it, but what we see in that slice tells us all we need to know. 

My only knock against this film is the pseudo-documentary style used haphazardly throughout. The film offers the conceit that Taylor, who is apparently attending college, is taking a filmmaking class as an art credit and has decided to film his life as a cop. He has a variety of cameras, and so do other groups we see--black and Mexican gangbangers, ICE agents, etc. While the conceit allows for some great footage and unique camera angles (a camera apparently attached to the end of a shotgun, for example, facing back at the holder, is one such shot that stood out to me), it also feels very contrived and haphazard. At times the filmmakers go to great lengths to show characters filming each other and holding cameras. At other times they include large numbers of shots that are clearly not from any of the established cameras, which leads me to ask what the real point is of the choice? I guess it's what I alluded to before--an attempt to show a more realistic slice of life as a police officer. I just think they could have handled it a little more suavely.

But that's just a small knock. Overall this was smart, engaging, and intense filmmaking, and it stands out as one of my favorites seen this year. Easy to recommend.

Alternate Film Title: "So Many F-Words"