Review of End of Watch (2012) by Meritcoba — 26 Jan 2016

A car stocked with criminals nearly made me quit in disgust as their verbal exchanges were so interspaced with curses that it felt pointless to watch more of the crude bro conversation. It wasn't only offensive, it was just hard to follow the maimed speech. I did however resist the temptation, as I did when confronted by the gung-ho style of the main protagonists, two cops, one with Mexican background and the other more mainstream american.

The movie is a bit of an acquired taste therefore. It shows mostly the interaction between the two policemen, whom we follow through their daily routines in keeping a measure of order in a criminal invested neighborhood in LA. There isn't much of a story in it as we mostly follow the guys from incident to incident, most of which are unrelated to each other. The feel of reality is reinforced by the use fake 'handy cam' imagery. Luckily the movie makers resisted the temptation to make the whole movie that way. When used in a careful way this camera work reinforces instead of annoys, like when it became a hype some time ago. I recall a Dutch television series that was shot that way while it did nothing to add to the experience. It was just overdone and annoying.

We also get a peek into the private lives of the cops, thus giving us more of a connection, but in my case it never quite worked out that way. I just didn't get to like the guys with their too brazen attitudes, so I never got to care what happened to them in the end. This is partly because the acting wasn't really remarkable.

What this movie made me wonder is why it was made at all? It seems to pretend to be a documentary. If you want to pretend to be one, why not just make a real one? With real people, for once.

I gave it a 9 anyway because of my self imposed score system. I score in 1,5,9 and 10. Since this movie is better than a five because of the smart camera use and the near real feeling I think it deserves to be in the 9 score more. But barely so.

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