Review: Brutal End of Watch Blurs Line Between Cop, Horror Films

"That boot from the OC actually thinks he can chase down every perp on foot?"

 Grade: B+

I'm not ashamed to say that Training Day is my second favorite movie--in life. I also have a healthy respect for Training Day writer David Ayer and his oeuvre, so I'm practically predisposed to kind of love End of Watch. But, there's no way around it: End of Watch is Southland: The Movie.

As reductive as it sounds, that's not a bad thing.

End of Watch doesn't necessarily surprise or change the game for cop film, but it goes a long way to making the fear and uncertainty that cops live with every day as tangible as it is terrifying. With a Paranormal Activity aesthetic and enough jump scares to match anything coming out of Lionsgate's October offerings, End of Watch is as much a horror film as it is a slice of life psuedo-docudrama.

David Ayer returns to his favorite well--the grimy, unflinching world of the cops, crooks, and gangbangers who populate the streets of South Los Angeles--with End of Watch, this time following  LAPD patrolmen Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena), a pair of dudebro "supercops" who epitomize the gung ho warrior spirit that drives young men and women to put their lives on the line for a citizenry that hates and fears them in equal measure. When Taylor and Zavala return to the streets after justifiably shooting a pair of gangbangers, the two "Ghetto Gunfighters"--clearly, Keanu's Tom Ludlow was not the  last of these legendary figures--they manage to anger a small time gang and a stumble onto the operations of a major Mexican cartel, both of whom are seeking to establish a foothold in South LA's crime-ridden streets. As Taylor and Zavala go about their days of patrolling, saving lives, and building families, danger follows them to every call, waiting for the opportune moment to strike and make sense of the title End of Watch.

Ayer takes his third shot at directing with End of Watch, opting for the now-exhausted found footage approach, and manages to make something that is both wholly derivative of his earlier  work yet remarkably purer. Taking cues from  underrated network-then-cable hit Southland, he smartly follows the daily adventures of his two central patrolmen while letting the main arc simmer in the background until the riveting third act. Keeping the action focused on Taylor and Zavala's patrolling proves as effective on the big screen as it does on the small screen because, despite the best efforts of the networks to push detective-based police narratives, patrolling officers invariably get the most action of their brethren in blue. Yet, their position as the tip of the spear means they are constantly in the line of fire, an unnerviing state that Ayer wisely highlights with some superb scenes where Taylor and Zavala have no earthly idea of the danger lying around the next blind corner, an approach that culminates in a harrowing final act that proves that bravery rarely replaces brains in any combat situation. That's not to say End of Watch is solely a harrowing, suspenseful experience. Quite the contrary. Ayer peppers End of Watch with the same type of slice of life moments that are riotously, absurdly funny--especially an early scene that sees Zavala fist fights a perp, who may seem familiar to Training Day fans like myself, in an attempt to defend his personal honor.

80% of End of Watch's success comes from the exceptional work done by Gyllenhaal and Pena. Gyllenhaal retreads much of the same ground he covered as shell-shocked marine--Taylor just so happens to be an ex-Marine--in Jarhead, but we see a man who is a little better adjusted--and supported--and drifting closer to happiness. Granted, it's still a typical Gyllenhaal performance, which means he's a little too wired, too unsettled to make anyone entirely comfortable in his presence. Pena, on the other hand, continues to prove himself an invaluable character actor who can easily switch from dramatic to comedic postures. From a distance, the interactions between Pena and Gyllenhaal resemble the traditional buddy-cop formula, but both Pena and Gyllenhaal ground the characters in enough earnest, off-the-cuff humanity that they make Taylor and Zavala's overdone masculinity seem just like the act it truly is. Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez both do a decent job of providing anchors as Taylor and Zavala's respective significant others, but neither has enough screen time to register as more than vaguely motivational afterthoughts. America Ferrera and Cody Horn offer a better counterpoint to Gyllenhaal and Pena as two female officers who have been irreparably hardened by their time streets. While most of these ladies do adequate wotk with the small roles their given, the undeniable MVP of the ladies hovering in Taylor and Zevala's orbit is Latin rapper Flakiss (government name: Yahira Garcia) as a Chola Snoop. Flakiss may sport clearer delivery than Felicia Pearson but their gangster girls share a spirit that guarantees wildly inappropriate, and often violent, moments that recall some of the more offbeat moments from The Wire.

Performances and aspects of Ayer's direction aside, End of Watch is so similar to Southland that Ayer should probably be staring down an IP case right now. From the hand-held camera style--which is fairly inconsistent--to the patrolman focus, Ayer does little to distinguish End of Watch from its TV contemporary, which leads End of Watch to fall victim to many of the same failings as other cop narratives, including telegraphed plotting and one-dimensional character work. Mostly, End of Watch fails to do anything overly different or unique with the traditional day-in-the-life of a cop narrative, and it rarely seems ambitious enough to make any cognizant statement on the lives of its heroes aside from "life is hard for those cops out there." Truthfully, this is to be expected from Ayer because as good as he is at stirring potboilers, he's less skilled at crafting a larger, deeper narrative about cops and bangers that looks beyond the battle on the street to find the depth in souls and stories of these conflicted warriors and their mixed-up opponents. That said, End of Watch is still a solidly entertaining diversion that should tide you over until Southland starts its new season or new episodes of COPS surface.

On the side:

• The sheer presence of real Bone from Training Day implies that End of Watch probably exists in the same universe as Training Day and Street Kings.
• At some point the camera switches from first person to third person perspective within minutes. Way to watch for consistency, Ayer.
• Anna Kendrick is going to have a busy fall and will probably compete against herself in the coming weeks. Who does she think she is ? Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Can we be done with found footage? It rarely makes a narrative any more realistic, and it's leaning towards being more intrusive now than it did when Blair Witch popularized it.
• Why did no one else think of framing the cop experience as a horror experience before now? It's so simple it's brilliant. If only, they could do something like this on Southland...