End of Watch
Short description
End of Watch follows two Los Angeles police officers, Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, who patrol some of the city's toughest neighborhoods. The two are close friends as well as longtime partners, and the film moves between their working hours and their home lives, including Taylor's relationship with Janet and Zavala's with his wife Gabby. Their routine changes when a traffic stop turns up a small amount of money and firearms belonging to a drug gang, and the two officers find themselves marked by the organization they crossed.
David Ayer directed the film and wrote its screenplay, working from his own long engagement with Los Angeles law enforcement as a subject. It was his third feature as director, arriving between Street Kings and Fury, and he also produced it alongside Matt Jackson and John Lesher. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña lead the cast as the two officers, with Natalie Martinez, Anna Kendrick, David Harbour and Frank Grillo among the supporting players. The production was modest, at roughly 7 million dollars, but it reached about 55 million dollars worldwide.
Audience response has been solid: on IMDb the film holds 7.6 out of 10 from around 291,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 out of 10 from roughly 3,800 votes. A critics' rating of 7.2 out of 10 from 181 reviews places it slightly below the IMDb figure and above the TMDB one.
What's left behind the scenes
- To prepare for their roles, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña spent five months on 12-hour rides with on-duty police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department. During the first ride, Gyllenhaal witnessed a murder.
- Throughout the film, the characters say the word 'fuck' 326 times.
- The two main characters are based on real police officers Charles Vander and Jamie McBride, who served in the Newton division in the mid-1990s.
- Throughout the entire film, Brian and Mike never fasten their seatbelts.
- The Bloods street gang alliance is real and has been operating in the suburbs of Los Angeles since 1972.
- The scene where the partners crash into a silver van after chasing it wasn't in the script. Michael Peña actually crashed into a minivan because the director had previously asked to have the anti-lock braking system removed from the patrol car, which caused the camera to shake.
- The scene where Janet and Brian sing together during the drive was filmed secretly by director David Ayer when the three of them were simply driving around the area and gathering material for the film.
- When Zavala mentions 'badge bunnies' in a conversation with Taylor, he means girls who are attracted to uniforms.
- In the house full of kidnapped people, a statue of Santa Muerte can be noticed—a modern deity worshipped by some criminals in the US and Mexico.
- In the trailer scene, one of the characters says in Spanish, “Arriba, abajo, al centro, y padentro,” before drinking, which can be translated as “Up, down, to the center, and inside.”
- In the locker room, Taylor shows a Spyderco tactical knife, but they actually show a Smith and Wesson First Responder knife.
- At the beginning of the film, in the scene where the characters are talking in the locker room, Brian Taylor's head is completely shaved, but on the same day, when they show the meeting, his hair has already grown out a bit.
- During the party, La-La starts kissing a girl in a pink t-shirt who is holding a glass of alcohol in her right hand. But when the camera angle changes, the glass is in her left hand.
- The overturned pot lies on the asphalt in different ways. Sometimes flat in relation to the curb, sometimes diagonally.
- In the scene where Brian Taylor is wounded and lying on the asphalt, the streaks of blood from his mouth are constantly different.
- Special portable cameras were used for the “lapel view” shots, which were partially disassembled and then hung on special vests worn by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña.
- When Taylor and Zavala detain the man in the pickup truck who tried to kill Mike, Officer Orozco asks Taylor, “You alright?”, to which he shows four fingers – a special police symbol, “Code Four,” meaning “I’m okay, no assistance needed”.
- During Brian and Janet's wedding, Zavala asks Taylor: "Why are you getting married in a police uniform?", even though Taylor is getting married in a suit. There was a version where Taylor was getting married in a police uniform, but that scene was removed.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
