Cop dramas may be a dime a dozen, but David Ayer’s End of Watch is one of a kind: The picture is by turns clever, compelling and unconscionable, so artful in its artifice that sometimes it almost fools you into believing that it’s reality.
That’s the point: This story of two young Los Angeles police officers who run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel is told through faux found footage, shot by the cops themselves as they patrol one of the roughest parts of the city. We see these guys, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, horsing around in the patrol car one minute and busting down doors the next. Some of the horrors they encounter — two young children locked in a closet and bound with duct tape, a crackhead’s babysitting technique — are so unsettling these young cops can barely fathom them.
Unfortunately for them, and for us, things get worse, and the scale of horror and violence escalates. Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal and Peña experience, and yak about, so many of life’s pleasures and annoyances: Peña speaks glowingly of married life, and looks forward to the birth of his first child. (His wife is played, in a small but lively turn, by Natalie Martinez.)
Gyllenhaal thinks he’s finally met the girl of his dreams – she’s played by Anna Kendrick — and, in between cracking occasional benign off-color jokes, earnestly asks his partner for advice. These are the finest scenes in the movie, places where the actors get to build their characters layer by layer.