Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña star as young Los Angeles police officers Taylor and Zavala as they patrol south central’s meanest streets, creating a riveting portrait of the city’s most dangerous corners and the cops who risk their lives there every day. –TIFF
David Ayer (born 1968) is an American screenwriter, film producer and film director.
David Ayer was born in Champaign, Illinois in 1968. He grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota and Bethesda, Maryland, where he was kicked out of his house by his parents as a teenager. Ayer then lived with his cousin in Los Angeles, California, where his experiences in South Central Los Angeles became the inspiration for many of his films.
Career
Ayer’s screenplay, Squids, was based on his experiences as a submariner in the United States Navy, experience that he had earlier put into rewrites of the submarine thriller U-571, a fictional account of Americans capturing the Enigma code rather than the British. The furor that surrounded the film’s release led Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, to claim that it was an “affront to the memories” of those involved and Bill Clinton, US President at the time, to write a letter emphasizing the film’s fictional nature. Ayer has said that U-571… read more
What struck me from the first frame of "End of Watch" was its inherent realism. At times I almost forgot I was watching a fictional film because of the believable acting, the 'dashboard cam' setups of the cop cars, and yes, the shootouts which put the viewer right into the action. It works *because* it is graphic, whereas other films might not quite reach that pinnacle. It is a story that needs to be told and heard.
Watchable as a straightforward cop buddy movie once you overcome the intial conceit that even the bad guys seem to be happy to film their (mis)deeds, but it is very hamfisted when it tries to tie the exploits of its main characters to larger organised crime. In addition, the villains are very one-dimensional, and make the film hard to take seriously. (But at least there's some Mazzy Star in there!)
Entertaining, buddy cop movie. Episodic in a good way. Three problems: 1. The identifiable villains are narratively shoehorned. 2. Ladies = props. 3. The cinéma vérité Blair Witchiness is reinforced and jettisoned throughout the film, depending on the scene, i.e. Gyllenhaal's cop character is making a movie about his job, or not, HE IS, nope, FOR SCHOOL, not really, STOP FILMING CADET, whatever, IT'S REAL LIFE, nah.
In our annual poll, we pair our favorite new films of 2012 with older films seen in the same year to create fantastic double features.
In stupid fashion, I expected this film to be a straightforward “New Jack City” type of film, where the bad are bad, the cops are good, etc. But I did wrong. I repent. Even when watching the very start… read review