End of Watch is a forgettable title for a film which tries tremendously hard to be something more than it is: namely, a one-dimensional cop-buddy movie. Director David Ayer throws all sorts of modern lo-fi tricks at the screen to hustle up an authentic gritty vibe and achieves it, but then lets himself down with an orthodox and ultimately unambitious screenplay beset with cartoon villainy. The result is still an entertaining couple of hours, supported by strong performances from both leads and the supporting cast.
Set in South Central Los Angeles, officers Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Zavala (Michael Peña) are harness bulls with the LAPD who have a penchant for stumbling into situations beyond their pay grade: while Sarge (Frank Grillo) constantly exhorts them to be out there writing tickets, the boys can’t help themselves: an opening sequence shows them pursuing then (justifiably) shooting dead armed offenders, and later, even a casual check in on a missing old lady turns up a huge cocaine shipment, a people smuggling operation and a mass of tortured and murdered immigrants.
Cinema vérité is provided courtesy of a filming style which you’ll love or hate: being an aspiring amateur filmmaker, Taylor carries about his person several product-placed Canon handycams and about four “flip” recorders, and so we mostly watch early exchanges through his own, and jerky, erratic camera work. When the camera needs to be still to dispatch with plot exposition and character establishment, the director contrives to mounted it on the dash of the boys’ Black & White, and is not averse splicing in to aerial shots and other conventional cinematic frames, somewhat giving the lie to the “found footage” intent. In any case, after a nauseating ten minute spell at the beginning, the framing does settle down a bit.
Now it is one thing having an aspiring film school police officer toting a camera World’s-Scariest-Police-Chases style: it is another for the criminals he’s pursuing to do the same thing. Both the not-so-bad African American gang and the baaad Mexican gang are obliged by this filming decision to be also compulsively filming themselves as they go about their gangster business. For a film which takes so many cues in its dialogue and attitude from The Wire, it well and truly missed this one: there’s no way Omar or the boy Marlo would be seen dead on handycam; least of all in flagrante delicto shooting up the neighbourhood.
Things trundle on: in candid in in-car conversations we better get to know the boys, who reveal themselves to be good, well-intentioned lads, if crime-prone, and with loving families, and or at least designs on them. And then, without really the dramatic impetus to suggest it, suddenly everything goes wrong. It seems the really, really baaaaaaad dudes down in Mexico are finally sick of these troublesome priests, and resolve through their local agents to do something about it: We have arrived at the final reel. Ayer does not disappoint, although he does then tack on a bizarre coda after the action is complete that I can’t fathom, other than as a means of providing a stronger up-beat to the finale.
This is an entertaining but, at its extremities, slightly potty film. Performances from the leads are all strong – Gyllenhaal and Peña are excellent, but cracks are visible in its heavy reliance on style, and weakly scripted villains.
End of Watch plays at the London Film Festival at the Odeon West End on 11 October and 13 October, and at the Vue West End on October 21.
Director: David Ayer
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Frank Grillo, Natalie Martinez, Anna Kendrick
Country: USA
Running time: 109 minutes
Film Rating: 
