End of Watch

Disclaimer #1: End of Watch is intense as hell. 

Disclaimer #2: When End of Watch isn't being intense as hell, it falters. 

It is a classic buddy cop movie. The movie starts out with Brian (Gyllenhaal) and Mike (Pena) in a car chase that eventually ends in a shoot out. These two guys are in the most dangerous department in Los Angeles and they are the biggest badasses on the force. The plot of the movie is very slow to develop, but essentially they get in too deep and end up on the Cartel's radar. Which as we all know, is definitely not somewhere you want to be. 

I had to take some time to think about this review. On one end of the spectrum, End of Watch is immensely entertaining. When these two guys are knockin down doors and chasing the bad guys, the movie sings. When they aren't doing those things? Well...that's where I'm stuck. The "non-cop" parts as I shall call them, are essential to the emotional aspect of the movie, but frankly I just didn't care about them. Some of them are funny (and there is some hilarious banter between the two of them throughout the movie) and most of them show the guys off-duty with their expanding families. It builds up these two men so that they can have something to lose, and I guess that ultimately I enjoyed these parts...I just think there were too many of them. 

Sweet Ed Hardy hat, bro!

"Come on we're cops. Everyone wants to kill us."

I'll continue with what End of Watch does wrong. For starters, the plot can't decide on whether it wants to be about the bromance between these two, or a Cartel-revenge story. It ends up being a hybrid of both and the fact that it couldn't make up its mind hurts both stories. I think this is why many of the "non-cop" scenes are not as effective as they should be. Secondly, the whole "found-footage" camera explanation thing doesn't really work here. Now I should clarify: the fact the movie is doing handheld cameras is PHENOMENAL. It really adds to the intensity. What I am saying is that the way that the movie incorporates it into the plot is kinda dumb. The two of them wear lapels with cameras but then there just seem to be cameras everywhere: on the end of their guns, in Cartel conversations, on the back of their car, etc. It would have just been better for the movie to not address the camera situation at all and the audience would have gone with it regardless. There was no need for Gyllenhaal to walk around with a camcorder almost the entire movie, and there certainly was no reason for a Cartel gang member to be walking around with one. 

My last complaint is about something that I don't usually complain about: language. There are essentially three factions in this movie: the cops, black gangs, and the Mexican Cartel. The Mexican Cartel has two main conversations among themselves that add up to about 5-6 minutes in length. Within those 5-6 minutes I would say they rack up anywhere between 100 and 200 F-bombs. They say the F-word AFTER EVERY SINGLE WORD. Now I'm sure that they talk like this in real life, but for the movie's sake, it just was not necessary and to be honest it was annoying me to no end. You may think that's me just being ridiculous, but watch the movie and I dare you to not agree with me. I'm not sure that Cartel members realize how inefficient their convos are because of their overabundance of cursing...

Thats a Wii controller with a gun peripheral and Jake Gyllenhaal is
getting a little too serious with his videogames...

Criticisms aside, this movie simply cannot be beat when these guys are on the beat (God I'm punny!). The first-person camera view makes the audience feel as if they are the ones knocking on a door, or arresting a perp. There are a few house searches in the film and I was forgetting to breath at multiple points. I just felt as if it was me in that house. Chases, both car and foot, feel as if I am running through South Central LA and had me completely sucked in. It's a gimmick for sure, but it's a fantastic one. 

Jake...seriously calm down with the Wii controller. 

Another aspect that I enjoyed about End of Watch is how real it is. It doesn't shy away from showing the deepest pits of the hell known as South Central LA. Human trafficking, crack parents duct taping their children's mouths shut, and the extreme measures of the Cartel...it's all here and it's all shocking. It's actually all very sad when you stop and think about it. It's sad that South Central LA is really that bad to where all of those things aren't even out of the question. Those events aren't just "things in a movie" they are most likely real problems that the LAPD faces on a daily basis. That's messed up no matter how you look at it.

I'm glad that I waited a day to write this review. End of Watch is a movie that looking back now, has kind of grown on me. Sure it has scenes that aren't necessary and yes, it drags on a bit, but ultimately its goal is realism. And it has that in spades. 

Pros:

• INTENSE. When these guys are on duty, s**t gets real and you have about as close a view as you could get with the great camera placements
• Sadly very real. It wouldn't surprise me that some of the more extreme aspects of the plot were borrowed from actual police reports. The locations feel real, the police force feels real, the citizens feel real, and the violence feels real
• Gyllenhaal and Pena did a bunch of ride-alongs and research for their roles and to improve their chemistry. It shows big time and is maybe the single biggest reason that the film works as well as it does. Their bromantic chemistry is phenomenal
• At times very funny. The banter among the police is childish but helps to lighten the tone here and there

Cons:

• The movie tries to make an emotional connection by injecting aspects of their personal lives. I respect the effort and recognize the necessity, but it wasn't doing it for me personally
• The language in the Cartel conversations is absolutely obnoxious. It annoyed me so much that I am literally deducting a whole point for this complaint alone
• Shaky cam is overdone in a few scenes. It mostly works well here, but in hand-to-hand scenes it is just plain stupid. Also, the plot explanation of the handheld camera situation is stupid. Would have been better to just not address it at all
• End of Watch ends really well, or at least I thought it did. Then the movie adds a final scene on to the end about the two guys joking about something inappropriate. Does it show the chemistry that they have? Yes, sure. But does it ruin the moment of the "ending" before it? Completely

Rath's Review Score: 8/10