Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena star as two LA cops in this movie. For some reason, I thought it would be a “found footage movie”. It is not.
It is pretty good. Gyllenhaal and Pena have a nice chemistry. Anna Kendrick is likable as Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend.
It could probably have a better title though. Maybe a title like “South Central PD” could have worked. “End of Watch” is a fairly generic title.
One negative is it is hard to know what is going on for a few minutes because both the cops and the criminals are taping themselves with video cameras. It got distracting. It did not ruin the film. “The problem with End of Watch, a gripping police drama, is director David Ayer’s stylistic decision to shoot nearly the entire movie tripod-less. Or, to put it another way, there’s a whole lotta shakin’ going on” (From James Berardinelli’s review)
It will a challenge for the people who edit the movie for TV. That will be a lot of dialogue to edit. That got a bit distracting too.
The plot is about these two guys investigating human trafficking and drug running but the movie is not plot heavy. Several scenes are not about that and the film almost plays like a slice of life film (or a week in the life film). The villains are not interesting. The two cops are the center of interest.
The trailer is misleading. The trailer leads you to expect more of a thriller. This is a good movie but the trailer is almost for a different movie.
