END OF WATCH

Jake Gyllenhaal (love his shaved head) is Brian Taylor and Michael Pena is Mike Zavala who are partners on a beat in South Central L.A. They are not detectives or members of the vice squad or part of the fraud unit; they are just cops on their beat. This movie shows the whole range of situations they have to handle; doing a welfare check on an old lady, going to a party where neighbors have complained about the loud music, rescuing children from a burning house and of course drugs, guns, and cash which they referred to as the 3 food groups.

The chemistry and compassion and friendship and bonding between these 2 partners is so totally believable. and the dialogue and banter of Brian and Mike is very funny and fast and witty and gross and sexist and racist and non-ending. That's one of the reasons why i liked this movie so much; the connection between the 2 cops.

There is also a story line about drug cartels that gets slowly developed during the film and is the contributing factor to the ending of the movie. Because Brian wants to get off the police force and get into law and criminology, he's ambitious and this leads the pair to get involved in a drug situation that had been handled by the feds and which they shouldn't have poked their noses into.

This ending is not the final scene in the movie which is a perfect closure to the story. The acting and music was great. I only had 1 major criticism; the film was shot in that shaky 'blair witch' fashion which drove me nuts at the beginning. Towards the end i either got somewhat used to it or that gimmick was used less but i wish it had not been used at all.

The only other 2 criticisms i have is that i can't believe that Brian did not know Spanish; working in South Central L.A.??? and there's a scene towards the end where they walk into an ambush and they are in a wide open courtyard and 6 gangbangers with machine guns and other lethal weapons are firing at them and the only injury is a bullet wound in Brian's hand! huh?

Bill gave it an 8 and i gave it an 8.5.