End of Watch

Without a solid plot skeleton, but with skillful direction and tight dramaturgical grip, David Ayer serves up a few snippets from the lives of ordinary cops who don't take drugs or bribes, but enforce the law to the best of their knowledge and conscience. It’s a good change that Ayer could have managed without the POV, but thanks to well-written and even better-acted characters (Gyllenhaal and Peña are one of the most coordinated cop duos ever), it works in every moment; including the fact that the last scene is absolutely the most emotional. 4 ½. (01/16/2013)

Sure, I could complain here about the camera and the sobriety with which this movie is made. However, I knew what I was getting into, and most importantly, there is still a high number of actors which I was really looking forward to. And so I started watching End of Watch, and lo and behold, it’s actually a beautiful and honest movie portraying the demanding work of police officers in Los Angeles, who fight drug cartels every day. It’s a kind of a peek into this world, plus it’s incredibly human, natural, and beautifully non-affected. I have to admit, I don’t do this every day, but I simply ignored the flaws of the camera in this movie. While at the beginning it wasn’t exactly a hit, the premise, the filmmaking craft and the actors made me praise it in the end. End of Watch may not be a film for everyone but giving it a chance is worth it. Maybe it can also surprise other people like me, who can’t stand shaky cameras. (05/09/2014)

Good cop movie. The plot is not too heavy, it’s mostly only a peek into the daily routine of police work in a shitty neighbourhood of an American big city – a series of more or less unrelated scenes. We don’t get anything resembling a “main storyline” until about halfway, and then the “plot” happens as if by the way. Which doesn’t matter, because what’s important in End of Watch is the format, the authenticity, and the brutal and dirty aesthetics that result from both the theme and the way it’s captured. It’s not a movie that looks pretty, it alternates between cameras on police cars, hand-held cameras, body cameras and normal shots on film. Together, this produces a very interesting mosaic that feels considerably less constrained when compared to a pure found-footage format. (11/15/2012)

A film that switches between a POV perspective and "classic" hand-held filming, between passion / police sentiment and a distant monitoring of strange guys for whom the service is an adrenaline ride (and it significantly affects them). The action scenes are brilliant and I must admit that I haven't felt such intense tension for a long time (Elite Squad?) - the combination of personal perspective and raw digital camera works great. As well as the everyday dialogues of both protagonists full of LA dialect and mundaneness. It is worse in terms of the attempts to look into privacy, in which the POV is a bit un-conceptual and disruptive, often as if it should rather obscure quite banal phrases. At the same time, End of Watch has no trouble dropping this sentiment several times. Unfortunately, the lavage between irony and fascination is mostly felt at the end, which is heading toward big things, but in the end it repeats semi-pathetically that which even a blind person could not miss... I give it what I give it for the great Gyllenhaal, the "unresolved" motif of guilt and a few great moments (the final shoot-out, the scene with a search of the house of the "old woman"). P.S. It would be interesting to compare "filming methods" in relation to Stone's thematically related film Savages! (11/05/2012)

At first what seems like a pure spectacle of reality, then a sinister psychological thriller in the guise of an action flick, and at last an overwhelmingly escalating drama of people doing hard work in an unbearable place. During the operations and the necessity to draw a weapon, you can truly feel every breath and drop of sweat, and thanks to Jake Gyllenhaal's sincere gaze, End of Watch will stay with me for a long time. The reason it didn't make the highest rating is precisely because of its main asset – realism. In its authentic filth, David Ayer's romp cut a little too close for me to simply see it as a "mere" spectator experience. (02/14/2014)