End of Watch (2012)
Directed by David Ayer
Two young officers are marked for death after confiscating a small cache of money and firearms from the members of a notorious cartel during a routine traffic stop.
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When you combine this sensibility with the film’s hyperbolic visual style, the result turns into something like an episode of Dragnet that looks like the first five minutes of Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days.
It’s telling that the movie ends not with a shootout or its aftermath, but two cops talking about a hilarious dating mishap (much the same way Dennis Hopper ended his 1988 cop drama “Colors”).
He has an intuitive sense of the omnipresence of urban danger and the virus-like nature of poverty and crime, and his screenplay for End of Watch evinces a fascination with the detailed in’s and out’s of policework and the tense relationship patrol officers have with the mean streets they are sworn to protect (in this regard, it is similar to Dennis Hopper’s Colors from 1988).
It is strange how the found-footage style of modern moviemaking didn't catch on until almost ten years after the wild success of 1999's " The Blair Witch Project ."
Because Brian is filming everything, the majority of the movie is presented to us in the “found footage style” that has plagued low-rent (and some high rent) horror projects since The Blair Witch Project hit big back in 1999.
This is the point where the influence of actual found footage movies like “The Blair Witch Project” is most evident since the use of handheld cameras puts you on edge.
David Ayers latest and best cop movie has some surprising parallels to Police Academy.
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The latter episode, and the dual focus on heroic work and goodhearted private lives will put some in mind of Ron Howard's populist firefighter drama "Backdraft."
Usually a fad comes and goes in nearly as quick of succession, but ever since 2008's " Cloverfield " and 2009's " Paranormal Activity " hit it big, there have been a wave of like-minded pseudo-documentaries that place the audience in the footprints of the characters.
The weekend’s other police movie, David Ayer’s End of Watch (Open Road Entertainment), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, is a little more grounded in reality as it uses a similar pseudo-doc “found footage” format that audiences have gotten used to thanks to the “Paranormal Activity” movies and hits like Chronicle.
Ayer's a sucker for the stylistic fallacy spawned by " Blair Witch Project " and " Paranormal Activity ": the lazy notion (already old hat) that an unmanned camera, the mechanical eye, automatically ensures documentary reality and immediacy.
Much of the film is told from this perspective and the camerawork is of the “Cloverfield” variety.
Usually a fad comes and goes in nearly as quick of succession, but ever since 2008's " Cloverfield " and 2009's " Paranormal Activity " hit it big, there have been a wave of like-minded pseudo-documentaries that place the audience in the footprints of the characters.
Yes, using found footage to stitch together a plot got old by the time the credits for "Cloverfield" rolled.
The “found footage” angle from films like “Cloverfield” and “Chronicle” has proven to be a boon at the box office, so it’s easy to see why Ayer chose it.
Our main window into the LAPD is Officer Brian Taylor , a former Marine played by a sullen Jake Gyllenhaal ; his partner, Mike Zavala, is the kind of noble minority that white cops have been paired with since "Dirty Harry," though Michael Peña ("World Trade Center") gives him warmth, if not depth.
As Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, they spout faux-philosophical one-liners like "I am the fate of a badge and a gun," use hidden cameras to record themselves beating up criminals, and generally do everything they can to embody the spirit of Dirty Harry for the YouTube generation.
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They're a more realistic version of Lethal Weapon 's Riggs and Murtaugh.
OK, so the box-ticking combo of Brian (Jake Gyllenhaal) – cocky, lusty, reckless risk-taker – and Mike (Michael Peña) – married, cautious, expectant father – comes straight from the Lethal Weapon book of clichés.
The film won’t be remembered in the same vein as “Training Day,” but it’s probably a step above Ayer’s last directorial effort, “Street Kings” (note: Ayer only wrote the former while only directing the latter).
S.W.A.T., which he wrote, and Street Kings, which he directed from a James Ellroy story, provided a mix of good cops and bad ones to cheer or hiss.
It begins as just another LAPD cop story, something writer/director David Ayer is all too familiar with, having written Training Day and directed Harsh Times and Street Kings.
And it's also a change of direction for writer-director David Ayer, who has explored the dark side of police corruption in Training Day, Harsh Times and Street Kings .
Writer-director David Ayers (2008's " Street Kings ") clearly knows his way around L.A.-set cop movies and, if all that is dramatically different about this one is its aesthetics, that is enough to keep it from becoming old-hat.