Humping & End of Watch

I discovered another way for the bumper humper to gain a car length. When he comes to a red light and he’s in the right lane, he makes a quick right followed by a quick Uie and another quick right on the green. Yupp, he gains ten, twenty seconds, and who knows how many points in his roady video game. Oh, how I long for a cop car to see him do it. Oh, how I long for the cop to hold him there for twenty, thirty minutes. I wonder how many points he’d lose for that delay.

I saw End of Watch today and counted 583 f-bombs in the first hour. After that I lost count, but I’m assuming it must have gone over a thousand by film’s end. But—you know what?—it sounded entirely reasonable in light of the setting in really tough “gangsta” L.A. Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Officer Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) cruise South Central L.A., looking for crimes and bad guys and finding both in unlikely abundance—child abuse, house fire, a coyote house filled with thirty or forty illegals imprisoned in filth, drug cartel and gangbanger shootouts. And nearly the entire film is shown by hand-held camera or tiny lapel cameras (Taylor is making a film of their daily activities for a filmmaking class he’s taking), by dashboard cams, or by other hand-held cameras or cell phones of onlookers to various crimes. It makes a frenetic movement that approximates the high-speed violence of the cops and bangers. The film is all about the dangers the boys in blue face on a daily basis. But more important, it’s about the blue brotherhood of the entire force, especially the bond between Taylor and Zavala. They’re brothers, even more than brothers. If they were gay they’d be lovers. But they’re both married, Taylor to Janet (Anna Kendrick), Mike to his childhood sweetheart Gabby (Natalie Martinez), and married forever it seems. At Brian and Janet’s wedding reception, the two do a really clever dance expressing their feelings for each other. Mike tells Brian that when he asked his grandmother if he should marry Gabby, she told him: “If you can live without her, then man-up and cut her off. Don't string her along.” That’s what the relationship between the two officers is all about, nearly an inability to live without the other. Great movie. Great acting. Go see it.