By Mitch Lawson
Take it from me, the best part about “End of Watch”, is the end of End of Watch.
“End of watch” is a buddy-cop movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Anna Kendrick, and America Ferrera among others.
The “plot” of this movie is that two cops have the most awesome jobs ever and shoot people and pew pew pew!
They shoot the movie through handheld cameras, which they explain by telling us that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character is doing a project for pre-law. Which is fine, but that is the last time they address his schooling. But they fail to address why in the world gangster drug dealers are shooting all of their misdeeds with handheld cameras.
The home video theme does not work for this movie. The “realism” they are trying to convey just ends up boiling down to the actors laughing at their own jokes, and having completely ridiculous conversations on tape. It’s like watching wrestling, two guys are talking about something that should be private, but there’s a camera right there capturing it while they take no notice whatsoever of the invasion. They don’t even excuse it as some third-person cameraman! They try to convince the viewer that the characters in the movie might actually be recording themselves talking about mundane crap and videotaping their very illegal exchanges with gang-members!
Also, this movie takes cliché to the next level. I mean, how many times does the story “Just got married, wife is pregnant, hope that this doesn’t weigh on my mind when things go bad” have to be told before we get the message?
Not enough apparently, because not only did they tell a generic story, people love this movie.
I am not one of those people. If you want to see a fresh new story with original characters and intriguing plot points, stay away from this movie. But if you want sit through 90 minutes or so of “Yo bro, I got your back, you’re my homie, bro. I’d take care of your kids if anything ever happened, man” then check this movie out.
My Rating: 0.5/5
Eric Granson’s Rating: 4/5