At first glance, "End of Watch" looks like it's going to be another found-footage movie, though one set in the cop drama and not horror genre. Over dash-cam video of an all too real looking car chase that ends in a quick and brutal firefight, Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a monologue that defines both his character, LAPD officer Brian Taylor, and the film's themes (not too unlike the 'This is my rifle...' passages from "Jarhead").
One big elliptical cut forward and we see Gyllenhaal and his partner Mike Zavala, played by Michael Pena, returning to the force after what we learn is a month off for the investigation into their fatal shooting of the suspects has been concluded. Brian just happens to be taking a film class as part of his extra-curricular schooling so he has his own camcorder rolling, along with micro-cameras clipped to his and Mike's uniform chest pockets.
Over the course of the movie we see footage from Brian's camcorder (a constant source of annoyance for his fellow officers), the micro-cameras he and Mike wear, their police car dash-cam, a kind of reality-show wide angle lens fixed inside the camera and numerous cell-phone videos taken by different civilians as they witness and / or participate in various crimes.
Luckily though, Director David Ayer (writer of "Training Day") doesn't keep our view pinned to the various found-footage-finding cameras inside the film's world. Although he sticks with diagetically motivated cameras for the first few minutes of the film, Ayer quickly 'cheats' with gritty camerawork that is obviously from taken from the filmmakers' point of view and not that of the characters, along with some classically gorgeous aerial and establishing shots.
The overall effect is to put us squarely on the ground in the lives of the LAPD officers and residents of some of the most dangerous parts of Los Angeles. This also spares us, for the most part, the found-footage cliche ("People have to know!") that justifies the ludicrous notion that anyone would actually keep shooting video in these increasingly dangerous situation.
Ayer really takes advantage of this immediacy to connect us to the characters of this world with uniformly strong performances. Gyllenhaal and Pena have the kind of relationship that one can see in any bog standard "buddy movie," but what makes this film so effective is that their friendship, which includes practical jokes, raunchy banter and a fair amount of mutual button-pushing, feels completely real thanks to the strength of the writing and of their performances.
Ayer really succeeds in making us feel that there is a very real world 'outside the frame.' While there is an overarching narrative thread as Brian and Mike find themselves in the crossfire of a black vs Latino gang turf war and are ultimately targeted by a cartel leader, Ayer lets his characters and narrative breathe. Narrative strands collide and coincide, but in ways that feel much more plausible and satisfying than much of "Training Day," where the film's entire resolution turns on a coincidence that is improbable in its plotting and absolutely ridiculous in its timing.
We see much more of the day-to-day lives of Brian and Mike and their department than in a more programmatic narrative - and the material is often great. The two partners respond to the kind of calls that give child protective service workers nightmares. Brian talks directly to the camera about the joys of department paperwork and captures co-workers bitching about the politics inside the department. Other characters also at times 'kidnap' Brian's camcorder and talk directly to him (and us) through it.
Brian also falls in love with and eventually marries a lovely young engineer, played by the completely adorable Anna Kendrick. The moment where the two of them in full wedding regalia perform an obviously well-rehearsed 'first dance' to Salt 'n' Peppa's "Push It" is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long while. In fact, for a film about the terrifically violent fall-out of a savage gang war, "End of Watch" is often a whole lot of fun (especially in the family gatherings we see outside of duty) and a number of moments are outright hilarious.
I'm an experienced / jaded enough viewer to know that a movie like this will in the end have a conventional narrative arc (Neo-Realism this ain't) and I started to pull back, feeling like all of this additional character-revealing material (complete with loving familial attachments) was a typical emotional 'fattening-up' of the audience. Like the war movie cliche of the soldier who talks about his wife, children and / or mother being marked for death because 'hey - tragedy,' crime dramas tend to set up their protagonists as more-than-just-their-badge just so we'll feel sadder when they suffer and / or die.
Now, it's not that the film isn't doing all that (in fact, there's nothing unconventional about the film's plotting) but those great human moments and the detailed depiction of the film's world are as much 'the point' as the narrative itself. "End of Watch" is something special because it works as a memorable character piece and document of its world just as well as it does as a cop thriller.
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