What do you do when a gang member is too old? Um … do you hold an intervention or something? “Gee, look, DFlavMoney, I know you love to do gangsta s***, and by some miracle you survived this long, but, let’s face it, real gangstas don’t take iron supplements.” I ask these because the Hispanic gangsters in End of Watch are ancient. And it shows not only in appearance, but in stilted speech that just sounds kinda … off – like people who are trying so hard to prove they’re badass they go round the bend and start coming off as comic. I looked up the real life ages of Demon (Richard Cabral), Wicked (Diamonique), La La (Yahira Garcia) and Big Evil (Maurice Compte). Couldn’t find a single one. That can’t be coincidence.
I guess we’re always willing to invite a new look into El Lay (God bless you, Joe Bob Briggs, wherever you are). This one included cops Brian (Jake Gyllenhaal, bald!) and Mike (Michael Peña) who are both veterans, not vigilantes, and honest. Years of movie and television watching have led me to believe no such cops exist in the Los Angeles area. And neither one at any given time has a scene where he sighs dejectedly and offers he’s, “getting too old for this s***.” Oh, what has life come to?
The other innovation End of Watch tries out is first person perspective as if the scripted L.A. beat cop drama is one of the many mock-reality films. On a premise screaming, “Contrived!” Brian 
takes both hand-held and button cameras with him to all crime scenes on the guise that he has to fulfill a requirement for a class we never see him taking. This turns out to be kinda cool, because unlike, say, The Blair Witch Project, Brian and Mike are constantly encountering trouble. Their cop-lives are so replete with shoot-outs, drugs, endangered children, gang violence, shenanigans and general heroics one wonders why anyone would choose one of these guys for a mate. It’s like deliberately marrying a WWI flying ace. How many missions before you buy it, pal? God help the woman who can’t live without that.
Here is, of course, where we introduce the women our fellas are attached to: Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Janet (Anna Kendrick). The sole impression either made on me was at GylliBaldy’s wedding when Gabby quite graphically enumerates the ways in which Janet is gonna have to give it up to keep her man satisfied, because, you know, rival bitches just love th’ blue. The bigger impression of this particular scene, however, was that the wedding ended, everybody else went home and Brian and Mike stayed hanging out alone with one another. I guess I just couldn’t be a cop, because on my wedding night, I really wanted to be with my wife. Dumbass.
Speaking of dumbasses, Mike actually confesses to Brian that, “you’re the smartest guy I know.” What was that movie set in the future where lazy, mediocre Luke Wilson time travels to discover he is now the smartest man in the world? Idiocracy. Yeah, that. End of Watch is sort of a reality-based Idiocracy: the drama is realistic for the most part; there’s just too much of it – and no cop would would ask for this beat day-in day-out without a death wish.
Good cop! Good cop! Whatchagonnatry?
Think I’m gonna have a heart attack and die.
Good cop in LA? Don’t wanna deter,
But that scene won’t play. Stick to “waiter.”
Rated R, 109 Minutes
D: David Ayer
W: David Ayer
Genre: ActiveCop®
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Blue lovers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: “Stars” of penal-related reality TV
