I watched this over the Easter weekend
with my folks back in Ilford, it's a film that was released last year to
very little fanfare starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael
Pena as cops on the mean streets of Los Angeles who get caught up in a
turf war between various gangs and eventually become targets when they
keep accidentally busting the wrong people. The film follows these two
cops as the main characters, but the lives of their families and friends
are also detailed - as are the difficult decisions and barriers faced
by their fellow police officers. The film also stars Anna Kendrick,
which is important as I'm currently tipping her for future A-list
stardom.
The thing that makes End of Watch interesting is the
style in which it is presented. Half of the time it is shot in a sort
of found footage style, making use of on-board car cameras and handheld
cameras carried by characters, and the other half it is filmed in the
traditional way. The opening sequence of a car chase ending in a police
shooting is told entirely from the point of view of a camera located on
the dash-board of the police car involved in the chase. It initially
looks like it's going to be entirely in this style as the action then
switches post-credits to Gyllenhall's character filming himself in a
changing room, introducing him and his partner to the audience. As we
move into the outside world we continue with footage in the style of a
police reality TV drama, the idea being that Gyllenhall's character is
filming his life as a police officer for some sort of arts course.
Quickly after that though, the film switches to a mixture of traditional
camera-work and found footage - sometimes both within one scene. Then
by the end of the film the camera work has largely moved away from the
found footage genre, and exists entirely beyond the 4th wall.
So does this schizophrenic use of cameras add anything to
the film? I think it does. We start out in the classic found footage
style, which although we're all used to it adds a little realism to
what's going on. Then as we move slowly into the realm of traditional
camera usage some of that element of realism is retained. The gun
battles seem more real and the casual interaction of our two main
characters seems less staged or scripted. It takes a leap of faith to
allow the film to do things in this way though, as normally this sort of
thing comes about from lazy story-telling. I think End of Watch
successfully tip-toes along the line between believability of plot and
playing with way in which films are presented.
In conclusion, the film is pretty good and told in an interesting way,
and though the end is fairly telegraphed it still has an emotional
kick. End of Watch deals with some incredibly violent and disturbing
themes, and I had to question the rating that it received from the
BBFC. It has a 15 rating despite containing some horrific violence, a
lot of blood and disturbing images of human misery. The BBFC website
insists that because there is a clear distinction between the behaviour of the good guys and the bad guys, and that they don't feel minded to
rate the film as an 18. I find this interesting because it goes back to
something I wrote in my review of Badlands the other day - that the
context of violence is important. Though Badlands contains very little
violence it received an 18 rating in the 1970s (it still gets a 15 now)
because the violence is perpetrated by a heroic figure. In End of
Watch, though the police are occasionally violent, they are always
acting in self-defence or the defence of others, whereas the sadistic
violence is perpetrated by criminal gangs. This difference in the
presentation of the protagonists is what's important.
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