End of Watch: ’90s-style cop action. And that’s a good thing

End of Watch is the kind of cop action movie they almost don’t make anymore. And in this case, that is a huge virtue.

It is neither perfect nor especially original. But it has something many more modern films with much bigger budgets have lost along the way: weight.

Weight in the gunshots, in the blows, in the house entries, in the conversations inside the patrol car and in that feeling that any routine call could go very badly. 

End of Watch, known in Spain as Sin tregua, is a dry, dirty and direct cop thriller. A ’90s action thriller made in 2012.

And yes, that is a compliment.

Quick take on End of Watch

End of Watch is a very good, little-known action thriller. A film that deserves more attention, especially if you like street-level police cinema, with protagonists who are human beings rather than clichés and realistic action.

Its greatest virtue is not the story. The plot is simple and works more as an excuse than as a great narrative engine. 

But I do not say that as criticism, because the film does not pretend to be more complex than it is, nor does it try to sell you a hugely complicated crime puzzle. 

Not at all. What matters here is not finding out what will happen, but following two cops as they get into an increasingly serious problem.

And with that excuse for a plot, the film works very well.

It works because Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña connect well. It works because the action feels physical. And it works because David Ayer takes completely seriously the film he is making.  

There is no ironic distance, no modern cynicism and no easy humour or gag. There are cops, streets, violence and tension.

What End of Watch is about

The film follows Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, two Los Angeles cops who patrol tough areas of the city. 

In one of their callouts they run into something bigger than usual and, little by little, go from doing their daily job to becoming the target of dangerous people.

There is no need to say much more. Nor is there that much more to say. But part of the film’s strength lies in how a normal police routine drifts into a darker threat. 

End of Watch is about being there, inside the car talking to your partner, entering burning houses, responding to calls for help from fellow officers and showing how the street starts getting more and more complicated around its protagonists.

What I liked most about End of Watch

The best thing about End of Watch is that it shows exactly what it wants to show.

It is a film about cops who want to be cops. It sounds obvious, but it is not. Brian and Mike are not comic-book superheroes, detective geniuses or Reacher-style invincible guys designed to look cool in a trailer line or a poster pose. 

They are two officers who want to do their job well, protect their partner and get home alive.

There is heroism, of course. But it is a human heroism.

That is why the chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña matters so much. You believe their friendship. You believe their jokes, their conversations and that trust between two people who spend far too many hours together in a patrol car. 

The characters have the odd cliché, yes, but the actors’ work is so convincing that they do not bother you much. The film is built on that pair. If they did not work, nothing else would either. Fortunately, that is not the case.

And then there is the action.

End of Watch has realistic, dry and hard-hitting action. This is not clean Netflix action, choreographed to show off or designed as empty spectacle. Here you feel the blows, the fire and the bullets. Sound matters, and every shot seems to have consequences.

Action in the style of Heat, the kind of film in which, as I said at the start, bullets have weight.

I also like how the antagonists are treated. The bad guys are bad, they look bad and they are scary.  

They are not sophisticated villains or especially grey. They are a direct, unpleasant and physical threat. You feel that every time they appear, things can get very ugly.

Lastly, End of Watch takes itself seriously. It does not try to apologise for being a genre film. It does not want to deconstruct cop cinema or seem smarter than the viewer. It does not need to.

What I liked least about End of Watch

The main barrier to entry is the handheld camera.

It did not bother me too much, because I think it gives the film closeness, urgency and dirtiness — it makes many scenes feel less clean and more uncomfortable, which is exactly what a film like this needs — but I completely understand that it can become tiresome.

The device is very present. Between mockumentary, internal recordings and shaky camera, there are moments when the style choice is too noticeable. If you do not buy into that approach, the film may pull you out at some point.

The other drawback lies in the construction of the story itself. As I said before, the plot is more an excuse in service of the scenes than a powerful narrative mechanism. It is not a serious problem, because the film makes up for it with characters, pace and tension, but it is worth knowing.

If you are looking for a complex police plot, with elaborate twists and a particularly worked-out investigation, it will probably feel a little thin.

There is also one cop-movie cliché too many. Brotherhood, the partner as family, the danger of the street, the epic side of the uniform… All of that is here. The difference is that the film defends it so seriously that you end up believing it.

Very much in David Ayer’s line

End of Watch follows the line of other David Ayer productions.

It has plenty of that dirty, urban, street-level cop tone that was already in Training Day, although there Ayer wrote the screenplay and here he writes and directs. They are not the same film, but they share a hard look at the street, violence and the line between doing the job and being trapped by it.

It also has a small touch of the more direct violence of The Beekeeper, though without reaching that level of excess.

What is interesting is that here Ayer finds a pretty good balance: there is testosterone, toughness and cop epic (curiously where you least expect it), but there are also real characters rather than cardboard cut-outs, which keeps the film from becoming a simple succession of intense scenes.

Has End of Watch aged well?

Yes. Today it still looks excellent. It does not feel dated. 

Technically it is very solid and, although the handheld camera can reveal the period quite a bit, I would not say it has made the film age badly. Rather, it gives it a specific texture that fits what it is telling.

Also, because the film does not depend on major digital effects or a particularly fashionable aesthetic, it holds up very well. Its strength lies in the actors, the pace, the tension, the sound, the physical sense of danger and good direction.

Final verdict

End of Watch does not reinvent the cop thriller, but it does not need to.

It is dry, dirty, intense, believable and entertaining. It has a very well-chosen leading duo, physical action where gunshots have consequences and bad guys who fulfil a basic but fundamental function: being scary.

It is not for anyone looking for a complex plot, an epic story or characters with a thousand layers. But if you fancy a street-cop movie, hard action and a ’90s thriller spirit, there is a lot to enjoy here.

Sometimes you do not need to reinvent anything. It is enough to do well what others almost no longer do.

Technical sheet for End of Watch

Field	Data
Original title	End of Watch
Title in Spain	Sin tregua
Year	2012
Running time	approx. 109 min
Director	David Ayer
Main cast	Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, David Harbour, Frank Grillo, America Ferrera
Genre	Crime / thriller / drama / action
Country	United States
Available on	Prime Video / Amazon Video, check before publishing
Spoilers	Light, without revealing the ending