End of Watch - Written Review

Let it not be said that Film Crazy Adam doesn't step outside his preference zone for his viewers.  "Found-footage" movies are not my thing for a number of reasons.  For the record, this movie was able to screw-up the concept of found-footage.  And not for nothing, the shaky cam was distracting as hell and annoyed me to no end.  I'm going on about the technical aspect of the film and haven't focused on the story itself.  But such is the nature of all found-footage movies.  It's not what they're filming, but the way it's filmed.  In this case it's the film End of Watch.

No actual watches were harmed in the filming of this movie.

The film focuses on 2 LAPD police officers who, through excellent intuition and detective skills, end up getting in too deep and get into some serious trouble.  Now I am not an LA police officer, so I don't know how they act.  But I'm curious if they act like they're in high school in real life.  There's no better analogy for how these cops behave around each other in this movie.  They act like juvenile high school students.  They do, however, become completely serious when it comes to their work.  They don't fool around on the job...just every other time we see them...like a bunch of high schoolers...really.  In addition to that, the story is kind of boring.  How so?  There's no direction, there's no goal or quest that these guys are on.  While it's interesting to see them do all these highly dangerous traffic stops and these intense raids it's not leading up to anything.  It's just kind of aimless and boring, because I don't know where we're going with any of this.

Dude...we are so high right now.

The technical aspect of this movie irritated and confused me too.  We're first led to believe we're watching a movie edited together by Jake's character for a film class.  We think this because he's constantly walking around with a video-camera.  But then we're suddenly hit with all these angles that, while they're obviously being filmed on a $200 point-and-shoot from Best Buy by an amateur without a tripod, can't possibly be filmed by Jake or anyone else.  It's like there's a news cameraman, but there's no one there physically...so how are we seeing these shots and angles?  And why does EVERYONE in this movie walk around with cameras and film EVERY second of their lives.  Even the drug dealers and gang members carry video-cameras and document everything...for...some reason...(I don't know why).  And how did Jake get the footage from their cameras and edit it into his little project...if that's what we're watching?  What are we watching anyway?

Dance like nobody is watching.

In conclusion, while Jake and Michael have great chemistry this movie is hard to watch.  The editing is the worst part about this movie.  The weird passing of time and jumping around to angles that couldn't possibly be filmed from really confused and irritated me while watching this.  And just the over-usage of the F word.  It starts to lose it's weight when you literally use it every other word.  It becomes so you sound like a 3rd grader that just discovered that word and I can't take you seriously.  This movie was...interesting...I think?  But I definitely wouldn't call it a good movie.

Film Crazy Adam...thought some aspects were interesting, but overall does not recommend this movie.  He feels a little like his time was kind of wasted.