It was revolutionary back in the 1990s, (namely with The Blair Witch Project) but now it seriously comes off as "old hat" and a hinderance to the story being told.
Who seriously records that much? How many different people carry cameras at the same time? And more importantly, who edits this 'found footage' into a coherent film?
End of Watch doesn't dodge these problems, but hits them head-on. Unfortunately, it only poses a problem for the opening of the film as the story being told and the characters being presented to us are engaging enough to forget that we are watching a found footage film.
End of Watch follows two buddy cops, Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) who are back patrolling Los Angeles' mean streets after a blip involving a shooting and their names having to be cleared. The two cops are pretty much the stereotype cut-outs that we expect - Taylor being the cocky joker with the new budding relationship with Janet (Anna Kendrick), whereas Zavala is the settled married man, who has a baby on the way with his wife, Gabby (Natalie Martinez). It's when Taylor and Zavala carry out a random money/guns bust, they are targeted to be killed by the largely unseen cartel leader.
That's largely it, because the film largely focuses on Taylor and Zavala's relationship as the buddy around together on every day routine call-outs, including missing children, drugs busts and house fires. Oh, if the stereotypes of Taylor and Zavala weren't enough, there is also the mean, controlling Sarge (Frank Grillo), the annoying cop who plays by the book, Van Hauser (David Harbour), the tough female buddy duo Orozco (America Ferrera) and Davis (Cody Horn) and finally the rookie cop who really isn't cut-out for the job, Sook (Kristy Wu). Fortunately though, the film decides to largely gloss over the supporting characters as the film gives plenty of screen time to Gyllenhaal and Peña to truly blossom as characters and make us care for them as 'brothers', much like they see each other.
Pre-screen press material has hinted at the amount of time that Gyllenhaal and Peña spent with the real LAPD and in each others company to build a relationship and it's certainly paid off. Their friendship is effortless on screen - when they laugh and joke about each others relationships, it's like they actually have been friends for years and when they go through pain/heartache, they are there for each other like true brothers.
Unfortunately, for everything the film and the filmmakers get right with Gyllenhaal and Peña's on-screen relationship, they completely mess up with the cartel gang that are set to kill our protagonists. Demon (Richard Cabral), Wicked (Diamonique), Big Evil (Maurice Compte), La La (Yahira Garcia) and Peanut (Alvin Norman) are completely underdeveloped. They are introduced strongly enough, by gunning down and completely destroying a rival gangs barbecue and then hinted at some long standing ties with the LAPD, but then they practically disappear for the entire second act of the film. The threat to Taylor and Zavala is largely unseen and just hinted at through clues from other members of the LAPD and a weird night-vision sight on the Cartel boss who gives the order to kill Taylor and Zavala. Then, when the Cartel cronies are brought back into the film for the third act, they are caricatures of the characters that they were introduced as - shouting each other down with inane dialogue about having to come up with a 'plan' to kill the cops, calling each other and other people "Puta" a lot and then finally throwing in enough swearing, that frankly, a person who suffers with tourettes would be ashamed of. When the gang deliver the final blow of the third act, it frankly falls a little bit flat as they just aren't the strong antagonists that the film needs them to be.
Secondly, the direction and filming style from David Ayer was nauseating at times. I get the hand-held style of the film was meant to be hand-held, but it's established that there are three cameras (two that are attached to Taylor and Zavala's uniforms and then one hand-held one), but the editing of the film suggests that they were surrounded by about 10 cameras. It made the whole point of the film being found-footage to be redundant. If Ayer had decided to keep the three gritty hand-held cameras but then juxtapose them against some beautifully shot cinematography, it would have arguably been more effective. Instead, we get shaky camera work that brings on bouts of motion sickness, because Ayer obviously thought that the hand-held style would bring a real sense to the film. But, it didn't.
So, for everything that End of Watch gets right, it arguably has something that equally brings it down. It's like Ayer focussed so much on getting the budding relationship between Gyllenhaal and Peña right, that he overlooked other aspects of the film.
*** / *****
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