Before I went in, I was really looking forward to this cops-in-LA movie. I was curious to see how David Ayers (who seemingly makes nothing but this kind of movie, writing the screenplays for Training Day and Dark Blue, and directing Street Kings/Harsh Times) would handle his former turf but with a found-footage twist. Well…sad to say the movie never delivers the full goods. It’s pretty good and occasionally flirts with great (like the opening chase/voiceover) but doesn’t reinvent the formula enough.
What Works: The chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena is strong with Pena especially coming off likable. There are a handful of sequences (like that opening car chase/takedown) that make fine use of the first-person form. And if the ending had stuck to its guns (just picture how the movie ends but ten minutes sooner), that would have been truly shocking in a way the rest of the movie just isn’t. [Grittier things are on Southland every week over at TNT.]
What Doesn’t Work: Problem is, as strong as certain individual sequences are, the movie as a whole is lacking, and after a while there’s a randomness to the duo’s adventures that left me restless. The plot in the trailer is about a drug cartel coming after the pair, but that isn’t really the case until the final twenty minutes. The majority of the movie is just a good episode of Southland, something you can watch for free on TNT. Without a hard driving plot, a more in-depth analysis of gang structure or drug cartels, and heroes that are nice but not all that interesting (there’s no twist to them…which makes you wonder why Ayers thought they were so fascinating we’d follow them), I don’t really see the point.
What I Would Have Done Differently: First of all, the central gimmick and sole new angle (that this is a found-footage action movie) doesn’t really work because Ayers keeps switching to shots clearly NOT shot by any of the characters. Having a gimmick can be right if you really commit to it (Chronicle was better than almost any superhero film this year), but to not even have it be consistent? And why not go really in-depth into the gang itself? Explore the relationship between the drug cartels (the Sinaloa cartel is referenced but only referenced) and the LA street gangs (again, we see one gang leader have a 13 tattoo on his head…which I know means someone is connected to the Mexican Mafia, but the movie never tells us that or expands on this connection), because, well, if a movie has pleasant-but-uninteresting heroes and generic/vague villains, then what good is it? A less conventionally-satisfying movie like Rampart worked because Woody Harrelson (in a fantastic performance) was given a real character to play and showed us what corruption looks like from the inside out. Now that was an angle, and End of Watch should have found one too.
Loved the action in this movie. Like the reviw.