End of Watch

“End of Watch” teaches an important lesson that I hadn’t considered before.  When you are shooting a movie that is supposed to be a found-footage movie, always make sure to justify how and why every camera angle is being filmed.  Sure, this film tries to sell itself as a documentary, at least that’s what the synopsis on IMDB says, but let’s be honest, the techniques they use to capture the action are more closely related to found-footage movies than documentaries. 

In documentaries the camera crew’s existence is inherent and always subtly hinted at.  “End of Watch” justifies the camera’s existence by having Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Brian Taylor, carry around a camera (along with lapel cameras for him and his partner) for a film making class he is taking.  Those are classic found-footage tropes, along with the lack of a camera crew, which is why I’m rebranding this movie as a found-footage movie.  With those rules applied, this movie breaks said rules multiple times.  I understand that they didn’t have much of a choice in order to tell the story correctly, but they should have picked a different style of filming instead of making a sloppy movie. 

The only camera angles that should exist should come from Taylor’s cameras, because he presents them and they don’t mention or act like a documentary crew is following them around, but multiple times throughout the movie other camera angles are used that were filmed from an unexplained third party.  If Taylor’s cameras are the only ones that are supposed to exist at the time of filming, who is filming from the other angles?   One COULD argue that they are being filmed for a documentary, but when they go into houses, or see chopped up bodies, or get in freaking fire fights they never check on the safety of a crew.  When the government agent tells them secrets they are not supposed to know, he doesn’t ask the documentary crew to shut down their cameras.  There is another really big clue to the non-existence of this documentary crew, but I don’t want to give anything else away.  Anyway, I think it is safe to say there is no documentary crew, so the question stands, where do the other angles come from?  There is no answer.  They had to know someone would notice, but they did it anyway.  While I’m on this subject, I did like the realistic style they used with the handheld cameras because it made the movie very real, but I wish they wouldn’t have fumbled around with trying to make Taylor’s character the camera operator because when you cut away from the three cameras he gives you to use, you call attention to your ruse. 

But somehow, after all of that drama, I still enjoyed this movie.  They told a very real, very touching story about two L.A. cops who face the dangers of their job.  Jake Gylenhaal and Michael Peña create two characters that might act like immature frat guys sometimes, but underneath that they have big hearts and you just want them to succeed.  The supporting cast was great and I loved the realistic dialogue, even the gang member who couldn’t make a three word sentence without seven f-words (not that that particular word bothers me normally, but come one.  You can talk without that many). 

“End of Watch” is on Netflix right now and I strongly suggest it to anyone.  It has its faults, but this movie is definitely worth the watch.