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Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, America Ferrera, David Grillo, David Harbour,
Review By Greg Klymkiw
End of Watch gets better every single time I see it and let me assure you, my first and second helpings of this great cop drama were no slouches. My third helping was via Blu-Ray on a terrific home entertainment release from VVS Films and there's no two ways about it, writer-director David Ayer serves up a Grand Slam of a picture. It's one hell of a good show.
Some criticism had been levelled against Ayer's supposedly "inconsistent" use of shaky cam home movie footage blended with surveillance cam and straight-up coverage mediated not by characters, nor the watchful eyes of street cams, but director Ayer himself. There's nothing sloppy, herky-jerky nor confusing about the blend. Ayer, with the stunning work of cinematographer Roman Vasyanov, places you directly in the action of the cops - on and off their beat. However, there's a superb variation of shots and when needed, we get all the mediums and wides necessary to create visceral effects that are ALWAYS tied to the story-telling.
Working in tandem with Ayer's mise-en-scène is cutting by Dody Dorn that's never used in the now-fashionable wham-bam-thank-you-m'am style employed in most action films. Every visual and aural effect is rooted in story and Ayer's first-rate screenplay (replete with crackling dialogue and layered characters) is never given short-shrift by the visuals. Even more important is that it's never the horrendous let's-throw-endless-globs-of-shit-on-the-wall-and-figure-out-later-what's-going-to-stick direction so prevalent in the work of poseurs like Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams and Christopher Nolan - none of whom have any idea how to shoot action and let their (mostly) sound cutters drive the beats with sound instead of picture.
What really stands out on Blu-Ray is David Sardy's first-rate score which not only creates all the necessary aural layering, but with some judicious additional use of hit songs by the likes of Public Enemy, also makes for a soundtrack album that works on its own as backdrop, driving and yes, if any scribes are reading this, magnificent writing music.
It's a terrific picture that delivers a major bang for its buck for ALL viewers. The guys wanting action will love it. The gals wanting to see a challenging "date" picture will love it. Ayer peppers the picture with a compelling character-driven tale full of love and tears.
The Blu-Ray and DVD are chock full of first rate extra features if you need that sort of thing, including a genuinely fine commentary from Ayer.
If you missed the movie theatrically and/or just want to see it again, this is a definite example of a home entertainment product you'll want to own. Screw renting, screw Netlix, screw legal digital downloads, screw streaming, screw pay-per-view - End of Watch is a keeper.
My original review from its Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012) premiere and theatrical release is below. Buy it. Cherish it.
Watch it again and again and yet again.
I know I have.
My Dad was a cop for ten years. When I was a kid it was always fun seeing movies with him - especially cop and crime pictures since he always had more than a few things to say about the "Hollywood bullshit" or happily, the lack thereof. Curiously, it was the crime pictures like Scorsese's Mean Streets and Peter Yates's The Friends of Eddie Coyle that Dad always gave high marks to for capturing the side of life he spent a decade of his life fighting.
Most cop pictures left him cold save for their occasional entertainment value, but a handful of pictures stand out as movies he loved on several levels. Richard Fleischer's adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's The New Centurions was one that Dad always felt came closest to recreating "the life" of cops behind the scenes while Friedkin's The French Connection captured the dull, dirty, mundane aspects of police work and finally, how Don Siegel's Dirty Harry came closest to showing the frustrations inherent in the job and how sometimes, a good cop just had to say, "Fuck the system," and do what needed to be done.
Somehow, I think Dad would have liked David Ayer's End of Watch a lot. Hanging by the slenderest of plot threads, this mostly episodic nosedive into every harrowing moment street cops face, makes for an always jolting ride through the dangers our boys in blue face everyday. The other plus to this very fine picture is both the writing and playing of the two loyal partners Brian Taylor and Mike Zavata - beautifully rendered by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña.
A cop's partner is his lifeblood. It's become a cliche in movies and TV, but in reality, the level of loyalty, trust and love a cop has for his partner is treated by most filmmakers in cliched or archetypal ways. It's a testament to writer-director David Ayer that he captures this camaraderie by leaping beyond the by-the-numbers mismatched-partners-who-learn-to-love-and-respect-each-other. From the start, we know these guys are made for each other. If anything, their love deepens and becomes even more demonstrative as the danger and violence in the film intensifies.
Ayer achieves this by using a storytelling technique that in and of itself has become a cliche in recent years, but he pushes it to such extremes that as the movie progresses, we become less concerned with form because of the form and Ayer's clever use of it. The opening few minutes, for example, are shot via a windshield-eye-view of the mean streets of a patrol car, accompanied no less by a portentous reality-TV-styled voice-over. At first you briefly think Ayer's gone nuts until he reveals that cop Brian is a part-time law student putting himself through university as a cop and is studying filmmaking as an elective. As such, he is shooting everything on the job to make a documentary as a class project.
I bought this hook, line and sinker.
When Brian's character is not shooting (and sometimes even when he is on-camera with his rolling camera), the rest of the film is mostly pieced together with a variety of surveillance cams and even through the cams the young electronically obsessed villains use. Add great dialogue, superb realist detail, actual locations plus magnificent performances and it all adds up to a terrific neo-realist-styled slice of life.
Ayer's writing for the cops is dead-on, but what's especially great is how he does not shy away from the banalities and cliches used by the South Central villains who do the dirty work for the cartels. Criminals at this level are boneheads of the lowest order - raised on dreadful television in cultural isolation of the lower order. Ayer takes a big chance here - allowing loftier than thou critics to point fingers at his less-than-balanced portraits of these disgusting thugs. Just as many cops are "dirty", an equal number (if not higher) of the vermin infesting our city streets like rats are zero-brained followers with no minds of their own save for the crap they've ingested in popular culture and from each other.
The narrative itself focuses upon the close friendship of the two cops, their love lives and the importance of family in all its forms - blood, community and crime. Taylor and his Hispanic partner Mike, go about their day-to-day exploits until they happen upon a group of deadly local dealers who are tied to vicious drug cartels. The two cops begin investigating until they get so close to the source of criminal power that the cartel orders hits on them.
So many films in recent years (including those Ayer has written and/or directed) have focused up the "dirty" cops. Reversing this trend with End of Watch is not only welcome but, I think necessary to bolster those in the force who genuinely embrace the protection of the citizenry.
To be a good cop in a world where crime is escalating and when administrative shackles are getting tighter and where cops are even forced into plying their trade by the powers-that-be in ways they know are unfair to those they're supposed to protect is narratively and politically satisfying as it is savvy.
It's the best cop picture in years!
"End of Watch" premiered in a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival, enjoyed a wide theatrical release and is available for purchase on Blu-Ray via VVS Films. Feel free to use the links below if you plan to buy the movie (and the highly recommended soundtrack album) via Amazon. Each time you click on those links and order direct through them, you're supporting the ongoing maintenance of this review site.
