End of Watch

End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, was my selection for a Saturday evening big Hollywood movie. I considered Life of Pi, but I was scared off by the two-hour-plus run time and the blurb line on Amazon Instant Video: "Together, they face nature's majestic grandeur."

End of Watch turned out to be a good choice. Produced, written and directed by David Ayers of Training Day fame, End of Watch is a postmodern, postmillennial Adam-12; it chronicles, in a faux digital cinéma vérité style, the adventures of two honest LAPD officers, played by Gyllenhaal and Pena, as they patrol their turf in South Central Los Angeles.

It's a buddy film with a lots of well-written, mostly-believable young-man buddy dialogue. Everyone is beautiful of course because it's a big Hollywood film. The soundtrack is quite good, too. (The love scene between Gyllenhaal and his romantic interest, played by Anna Kendrick from Up in the Air, features "Fade into You" by Mazzy Star.)

What makes the movie compelling is a plot that keeps the baleful force, the Sinaloa Cartel, that the two honest police officers keep haphazardly foiling, mostly off screen. This creates a tension, a sense of impending doom, that makes for an excellent action film.

At one hour 50 minutes End of Watch speeds along with never a dull moment. It blows away the only other pure action movie I've seen -- Skyfall -- since I started watching a big, recently-released-to-DVD Hollywood film each Saturday evening. I'd have to say that overall End of Watch is right up there with The Master.