Have you ever wondered what being a police officer would be like? Every day, cops suit up knowing they could be getting dressed for the last time and then go out and place their lives on the line. One minute, they’re cutting up with their partner, and the next, they’re entering a strange house and wrestling a gun away from a drug-crazed addict. Even something as innocuous as stopping a driver who committed a traffic violation could turn into a life or death situation.
Having seen “End of Watch,” I have a better idea of what being a police officer would be like. And I know it’s a job I couldn’t do.
This remarkable movie begins with a car chase through L.A. as seen through a mounted police camera. As the driver pursues a pair of gang members, his partner, Officer Brian Taylor, played by Jake Gyllenhall, delivers a voiceover that ends with the words “...and I love.” The movie that follows is about staying human while wading through a cesspool of inhumanity.
“End of Watch” centers on Officer Taylor and his partner, Mike Zavala, played by Michael Peña. Refreshingly, it’s not another movie about rogue cops who follow their own rules or bad cops who are worse than the people they arrest. Rather, Taylor and Zavala are good cops and good men, and as a result, everyone except their captain hates them.
Taylor and Zavala are essentially every cop. They find small children tied up with duct tape and thrown in a closet, they stop a man from beating a female officer to death, they save a woman’s kids from her burning home and while canvassing a neighborhood for drug activity, they stop a man who’s driving a truck nicer than he appears he should be driving. From that arrest, a narrative thread about a human trafficking cartel slowly unravels and wraps itself around their necks.
No matter how much cops prepare for what they might face, nothing can prepare them for the worst. “End of Watch” takes Taylor and Zavala as far as you can imagine. In one key scene, they respond to a welfare call and wind up finding something that shows how savage people can be. When our two cops make their gruesome discovery, they finally know what we’ve known all along: they’re dealing with the kind of people you and I wish only existed in a movie.
This unflinching view of evil gives “End of Watch” a power greater any other cop movie I’ve seen. It’s extreme, but not sensationalistic or excessively graphic. If the headlines we read about the violence in our streets are true, then “End of Watch” is as real as it gets.
Writer and director David Ayer uses a mix of shaky video from a camera Taylor carries around as part of a film class project and traditionally shot footage. At first, I found the technique distracting, but once I realized the gritty video and sloppy close-ups were a part of how Ayer was telling his story, I was drawn in.
For all of its immersive realism, the most impressive thing about “End of Watch” is the performances. Gyllenhall and Peña are transcendent as two cops who are not just partners on the beat and friends off the clock but also brothers at heart. I especially enjoyed the scenes in which they cruise in their patrol car, cutting up and giving each other a hard time. The dialogue in these scenes is hilarious and seals a bond between these two men that sets up a devastating climax.
I spent the last 20 minutes of “End of Watch” choking back tears and left the theater with a deeper respect for our men and women in blue. No good cop, bad cop or buddy cop movie has ever affected me that way. Even now, tears are welling as I think about the last few, staggeringly powerful, scenes.
“End of Watch” is easily the best film of the year so far and one of the best police dramas ever made. However, do not go in unprepared: The characters drop enough F-bombs to make Al Pacino’s Scarface blush. If you can accept the language as part of the context in which the film takes place, then make this the next movie you see.
Rated R for violence, disturbing images, language, sexual references and drug use. Four stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.