End Of Watch

Suggesting films is a tough thing because you can't just tell people to go see movies that you enjoyed. For example, I really enjoyed Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ but I will rarely suggest that to people because its a unique film to say the least. You got to make sure that you know the tastes of the person you are talking to and see if the film your talking about will fit those tastes. Its complicated when you really think about it but once you get used to a person's tastes you can find a good exchange of films that you can suggest to them. For me I love hearing what people suggest because it will tell me more about a person than most conversations will. So what does all of this have to do with End Of Watch? Well one of my fellow film aficionados whose knows my tastes pretty well highly suggested this to me saying that it was great film and wasn't getting enough credit. While I certainly was not going to pay to go see it, I was definitely interested in watching this on Netflix or maybe Redbox. Why was I interested? Who knows maybe I was willing to give Jake Gyllenhaal a chance. End Of Watch taught me a very important lesson, no matter how well some one knows you sometimes they will misread you.

 End Of Watch follows two young patrol cops Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhall) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) as they travel the streets in South Central LA. Along the way they must deal with the clashing personalities of their fellow officers and the constant danger of criminals. They handle everything from hand to hand brawls to discovering drug cartel houses. Besides patrolling the streets they also deal with their personal life, Taylor dealing with young love and Zavala dealing with his pregnant wife. Unfortunately as the cops start to pile up victories against the drug cartels, they get hits put on their heads. The partners must find a way to protect civilians against Big Evil and his gang while also protecting themselves to go back to their families.

Well the movie tried to do something cool but ultimately failed on a lot of levels in my opinion. Overall I would say that there was very little to enjoy about this movie and I found myself bored throughout the film. I didn't care about the characters and didn't care what happened to them. I could tell that the film was trying to do these things and tried hard to make a connection with me as a viewer but they failed. This all comes down to the weakest part of the whole film which is the script. Good screenwriting involves good cinematic languages and not using middle school vocabulary and language. I felt like throughout the whole film I heard a screenwriter trying to be "realistic" and trying to reflect real people. Unfortunately I couldn't believe the way these characters talked especially the bad guys. And first off who calls the bad guy Big Evil? I mean really? That's plain lazy writing right there. Then beyond that you have his gang which feel the need to say Fuck every other word. Now I have no problem with cursing and filmmakers like Tarantino show how a mass quantity of cursing can enhance the dialogue and its characters (i.e. Pulp Fiction). Here though the cursing adds nothing but annoying the hell out of the audience.

Well there are good things in this movie. I did like Janet's (Anna Kendrick) character as she had a solid scene where she felt like a real person and was solid overall. I also enjoyed the ending as I was surprised that the director could make a emotional scene and pull the performance from his characters.  That said those were the only things that I enjoyed about the movie and even the ending emotional scene was ruined. Why did the director put in that scene at the end? It felt like two middle schoolers talking and took all the good emotions out of the film. It ruined my image of these characters just as I was starting to feel sad about them. Along with that everything in the film is repeating itself over and over. I can't tell you how many times this movie does the "what you got over there?" and "see for yourself" scene to try and reveal something "shocking". Then when we see the "shocking" stuff its nothing that is even that big. At least in my opinion that stuff that is in this film should be know by most people but if they don't know about human trafficking or drug cartels then its sad.

To the basic core, I can't enjoy a movie or care about the action happening if I don't care about the characters. I found the action to be bland, slow, and uninteresting. It made no sense that Taylor survived but that's a whole different story. Then the "documentary" style actually made no sense in the movie. It made sense that the cop was trying to shoot a film but a lot of angles are left unexplained and the amount of times Taylor or any character is holding a camera feels idiotic. There are cameras in characters hands not because it makes logical sense or fits the story, but because the directors is like "oh right someone needs to have a camera". Why would a person heading into a gunfight be holding a camera? I could care less about this movie and found it to be a lazy and there are so many idiotic choices and dialogue that it felt insulting at times. I don't suggest this film to anyone as their time would be better spent riding around with a cop personally.

1.5/4