End of Watch
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Synopsis:
Action drama movie End of Watch is written and directed by David Ayer. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as Los Angeles Police Department officers who work in South Central Los Angeles. It was originally scheduled to be released on September 28, 2012, but the release was moved up a week, to September 21.
Police officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) are close friends and partners in the Los Angeles Police Department. Taylor is filming their police activities for a film project, attaching small cameras to he and Zavala's uniforms and carrying around a camcorder, much to the dismay of their peers and superiors. After shooting two suspects following a high speed chase, the officers are cleared and commended for their actions. Taylor and Zavala's antics are met with scorn by fellow officer Van Hauser
(David Harbour).
The officers respond to a call regarding a man scaring off a mailman while intoxicated. Upon arrival, the man hurls racist insults at the Hispanic Zavala, who responds by accepting a fight, to Taylor's approval. Zavala beats the man soundly and arrests him, but wins the man's respect for not mentioning the fight in the report. Later that night, the man and his friends are shot at by a group of Latino gang members and one of his friends is killed. The officers find the now-burnt vehicle used in the drive-by the next day, but are shooed off the scene by homicide detectives.
Taylor begins dating Janet (Anna Kendrick), to Zavala's excitement, as he feels Janet is the only girl he's dated who can connect with him on an intellectual level. Zavala's wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) is expecting a child soon. Taylor later marries Janet and, after a night of celebration, Zavala tells Taylor that, should anything happen to him, he will take care of her. Soon after, Gabby gives birth to the couple's first child, Mike Jr.
Investigating the South Central area, the two pull over a man in a truck, who draws a gun during a routine traffic stop. After arresting him, the officers find an ornately decorated pistol, a gold plated AK-47, and a large amount of money in his truck. Unbeknownst to them, the money and firearms are connected to the mexican cartel operating in the South Central area. One night, the two receive an officer-in-distress call from Van Hauser's partner. Responding to the call, the two find Van Hauser calmly waiting in front with a knife in his right eye, warning the two of a large criminal around the corner. Taylor and Zavala investigate and find the man brutally beating a female police officer. Surrendering himself for arrest, the man is arrested by Zavala while Taylor attends to the woman, whose face has been badly damaged.
Responding to a missing persons report, the two officers discover the children bound and locked away in a closet, arresting the distressed parents. Days later, a fire is set to the house, prompting Zavala to rush to the aid of the children as Taylor reluctantly follows. The two are commended and receive the Medal of Valor for their actions, but Taylor has mixed emotions about his situation. Using the house fire incident as leverage, Taylor convinces Zavala to further investigate the South Central incident. Arriving at the house, Taylor and Zavala notice suspicious behavior from outside and enter. They arrest another man, who is also in possession of several ornate firearms. Investigating further, Taylor discovers a hidden stash of prisoners, indicating that they have just stumbled upon a human trafficking case. Upon exiting the building, they are reprimanded by superior officers and informed that the man had been a person of interest with possible leads to the cartel. Taylor is left confused and agitated. After deciding to respond to a more easygoing call the next day, the officers go to investigate a welfare check from an elderly woman. After receiving no response, the officers break down the door and discover a cache of decapitated corpses, tortured by cartel members. Following this, a bounty is placed on the heads of Taylor and Zavala and the gangsters from earlier begin plotting their assassinations.
After a short pursuit with a reckless minivan one night, the officers chase the driver into an apartment complex, where the gangsters have set up an ambush. The officers are fired upon with assault rifles and Officer Taylor is shot in the hand. Taking refuge in a small apartment, Taylor decides that they are going to have to gun their way out. Escaping the complex and awaiting backup, the two are fired upon once more and Taylor is shot in the chest. Zavala desperately attends to him and cries out for backup, but Taylor remains unresponsive. Realizing that the gangsters have snuck up behind him, Zavala intentionally reaches for his gun and is shot repeatedly in the back and killed. Backup arrives and the gangsters are gunned down violently.
It is revealed that Taylor survived the encounter, albeit heavily injured. A funeral is held for Officer Zavala, during which Taylor tearfully declares how close the two were. In an epilogue, a clip is shown from the day of the shooting during which Zavala details hiding under his wife's parents' bed while they had sex. Taylor and Zavala laugh heartily, before going off to "fight crime or some shit".
Production:
Writer-director David Ayer wrote End of Watch in six days. After Jake Gyllenhaal received the script, he read it in one hour and immediately contacted Ayer. Gyllenhall and Michael Peña underwent five months of training for their roles as officers of the Newton Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The training included 12-hour ride-alongs with multiple Greater Los Angeles Area law enforcement agencies up to three times a week. Ayer said in September 2012, "I wrote the first draft in December of 2010, four months later I was in pre-production, and a few months later I was shooting the movie. We shot in August of last summer. It took 13 months to finish it, which is crazy quick. Normally it's not like that." End of Watch was filmed on location in South Central Los Angeles. Ayer had specific details about "photographic style" in the script "to help people involved in the movie to understand the photography and why we were seeing what we were seeing", explaining that "the script started as a pure found footage kind of thing. In pre-production, I gravitated very quickly towards augmenting that stuff with normal operating cameras. In editing, I had all this footage, which me and my editor built the movie out of, with never worrying about genre expectation."
Reception:
The film has received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 86% based on reviews from 90 critics, and reports a rating average of 7.2 out of 10 with the consensus "End of Watch has the energy, devotion to characters, and charismatic performances to overcome the familiar pitfalls of its genre and handheld format". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 70 based on 33 reviews.
Directed by David Ayer
Produced by John Lesher
David Ayer
Jake Gyllenhaal
Nigel Sinclair
Matt Jackson
Written by David Ayer
Starring:
Jake Gyllenhaal
Michael Peña
Music by David Sardy
Cinematography: Roman Vasyanov
Editing by Dody Dorn
Distributed by Open Road Films
Release date: September 8, 2012 (Toronto Film Festival)
September 21, 2012 (United States of America)
Running time: 109 minutes
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Language: English
Budget: $7 million
Box office: $18,168,633
Great movie.
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