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End of Watch (2012)
 
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Director:
David Ayer |
COUNTRY
United States |
GENRE
Thriller/Drama |
NORWEGIAN TITLE
End
of Watch |
RUNNING
TIME
109 minutes |
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Producer:
David Ayer
Matt Jackson
John Lesher
Jillian Longnecker
Alex Ott
Ian Watermeier |
Screenwriter:
David Ayer |
Review
David Ayer, known among other things for penning
Training Day,
now returns to the harsh streets of South Central Los Angeles to
fight crime
–
for the fourth time in a row as a director, actually. Clearly he
feels there is work to be done there, and judging by the culture,
people and discourse portrayed in this film, it seems like a
political disaster area, to say the least. Since I have never been
west of New York City, I cannot speak for the validity of what Ayer
presents here, but if South Central is actually populated by people
who act and speak like the characters in End of Watch, they
are living caricatures. That's true for most every supporting
character in here, and to a degree also for our protagonists, police
officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Miguel Zavala (Michael
Peña). They patrol these sun-drenched streets waiting for dispatch
to send them to the next crime scene, where they encounter
continually more mindless gangsters and gruesome horrors. In
between, they chatter and have a good time, and we almost get to
know them as human beings, although there's not that much
interesting about them. They're your standard TV-show cops, updated
with a little more gangster lingo and
–
as a pleasant surprise
–
enthusiasm for what they do.
They're also updated with small
chest-mounted cameras, which Taylor intends to use for some sort of
university project. This is of course merely Ayer's excuse for
telling his story with a shaky, subjective camera. As always, this
is tiresome to watch, but I like it far better here than in the
numerous ineffective horror movies of late (popularized by
Cloverfield).
It gives the film an intensity and realism (Ayer's intentions
exactly) which elevates the plot and creates some nail-biting
suspense
–
especially towards the end. In some of these scenes, there's
actually reason to believe you're watching events from real life,
but the Hollywoodish ending duly arrives to get us back to earth
–
in exchange for a few cheap tears. Here be spoilers: The climax
scene is both dubiously motivated, unnecessary undelicate, and
marred by an unrewarding instance of deus ex machina. Conclusion:
End of Watch aims for hard-hitting, crisp realism - and succeeds
to some degree, but not with any particular merit, because the film
has far too many flaws, some of which are amateurish.
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