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.

Flight + Skyfall + Argo

The last three Saturday evenings I have taken in a big Hollywood movie via Amazon Instant Video. I find that it is a good way to end the week. The three movies the last three Saturday nights are:

1. Flight, directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Denzel Washington
2. Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, starring Daniel Craig
3. Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck

All three came in at over two hours. Skyfall was so long I had to watch it in two sittings. And during Flight I found myself looking at my watch. The best of these three is definitely Argo, a tribute to CIA honor and integrity that goes a little way towards acknowledging American rot and hubris. It would have been nice to have a nuanced portrayal of an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, but no such luck. All in all though a fine Hollywood film that allows Jimmy Carter to take a little voice-over bow as the credits roll.

I had seen favorable reviews of Skyfall saying that Sam Mendes was taking the Bond franchise to a higher, more emotionally-complicated level. Don't believe it. Daniel Craig is just as flat as he ever is. Javier Bardem is interesting to look at but his villainous character is a joke, straight out of the funny papers. This movie is the worst of the three.

Flight has some good scenes, such as the coked-out, hungover "morning after" opening in the airport hotel. And Denzel, who I always appreciate, is good. But the movie could have done without the whole "whore with the heart of gold" subplot; it would have been more effective had it stayed in Bad Lieutenant mode throughout.

Watching a webcast of the Sweet Spot this past Friday I learned the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture is Argo, though A.O. Scott thinks both Amour and Zero Dark Thirty are better choices.