So explains director David Ayer in the EOW press notes. Best known for his dirty-cop film “Training Day,” the very authentic 2012-released “End of Watch” most likely had the Los Angeles Police Department breathing a collective sigh of relief that someone finally told their story in a positive light.
On the Job
Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) are partners. They love their jobs. South Central L.A. is easily the most dangerous location in America for the police, but they’re to-the-manor-born and on the job with enthusiasm.
Their world shifts from hilarious practical jokes in the squad room to heart-stopping, potentially deadly encounters with local gangs with enough firepower to equip a small army, and back to brotherly banter in the squad car in the blink of an eye.
Taylor and Zavala function like any well-practiced, experienced special operations team that has been tempered in combat—they’re ready to die for each other.
When they search an SUV and Zavala narrowly avoids getting blasted by the driver’s 9 mm handgun, it’s reminiscent of the hair-trigger reflexes of a mongoose avoiding a lethal cobra strike, and then pinning the snake in the blink of an eye. It has the same ferocious yet casual confidence. These are metaphorical cop black-belts.
One quickly comes to appreciate the talent required for this dangerous job. Highly competent cops, like all true war fighters, have restless Type A personalities. They’re energetic and aggressive normally, but with an ability to shift to a preternatural calm in the high-stress situations that typically cause hysteria in civilians. While they youthfully relish their roles as ghetto gunfighters, all of this is truly informed by a desire to do the right thing.
Officer Taylor carries a video camera everywhere, making his own homegrown version of the TV show “Cops” (which ran from March 1989 to May 11, 2020). Much like the movie “Chronicle,” where the lead character chronicles everything with a hand-held cam, this sign-of-the-times cultural shift was already well in place in 2012. It’s now morphed into a nonstop (mostly) millennial state of being: the endless recording of the movie of one’s life, that one is starring in, to be displayed on social media.
This is not your father’s LAPD. These kids say “dude” every other sentence, play ear-splitting rap in the cop-cruiser, and quip funny asides at the camera, like, “Being a cop is all about comfortable footwear.” They beat 100-degree heat by surreptitiously sticking their heads in open beverage coolers in neighborhood bodegas.
Director Ayer, who grew up in South Central, captures the atmosphere with lots of smoggy sunrises and sunsets. Anna Kendrick, as Taylor’s fiancée, is always a revelation. Peña and Gyllenhaal have highly enjoyable bickering chemistry. The rest of the cast, including TV’s “Ugly Betty” star, America Ferrera, are all highly effective in portraying LAPD culture.
The drama inherent in cop-corruption stories is low-hanging fruit. It’s easy and it sells, which is why Hollywood does so much of it. As Ayer points out, there’s also riveting tension in a situation where good cops do life-and-death things all day, then come home at their end of watch, fit into everyday society, and work hard to make their relationships normal.
This is a super-gritty, ultra-violent, hyper-expletive-ridden, and often very funny film. See it only if you have a stomach strong enough to deal with the very disturbing scenes involving gangland violence, hard drugs, and human trafficking.
