Is there anything new left to be done with the buddy-cop genre? Probably not, but "End of Watch" gives it a damn good shot. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña star as a couple of LAPD officers who patrol one of Los Angeles' roughest neighborhoods, Newton Division, where their gung-ho attitude will eventually get them in over their heads. The film is tense as all hell where it should be, funny and touching where you don't expect it, shot with an incredible amount of brio.
Director David Ayer is perhaps best known as the screenwriter of Oscar-winner "Training Day," and his latest is a similarly down-and-dirty look at police work. His is an LA that is alien to most of the people in Hollywood, a virtual no-go zone for the glitterati, and hence rarely portrayed on the big screen. Ayer films right in the middle of South Central, an area in which he grew up, and it smells as right and real as the Little Italy of Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" four decades ago.
Ayer has made LA cop films before ("Harsh Times" in 2005 with Christian Bale and "Street Kings" in 2008 with Keanu Reeves) but "End of Watch" is where he gets it right. Making heroes out of the LAPD is a tough job — since the infamous Rodney King beating tape and Rampart scandal of the 1990s, they have been perceived as racist and corrupt — but Ayer has a pair of likable leads, and he gives them plenty of room to develop their characters.
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