Two Days 'Til Retirement

In a weekend where there were four major theatrical releases, at least two high-ceiling limited releases and one major expansion into wide release, there's one reason that people didn't go out and enjoy Dredd, an excellent genre flick which sadly finished in sixth place at the box office and hasn't gotten the love it deserves. It wasn't House at the End of the Street or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which mostly attracted young women. It wasn't Trouble with the Curve, which appealed mainly to older folks. And it wasn't The Master, which is more like Oscar bait than blockbuster. No, for a film appealing mainly to young men, Dredd was hampered by the fact that most of their potential audience was instead down the hall with End of Watch. This movie is perfectly in director David Ayer's wheel house. The writer/director has been basing his stories in Los Angeles for over a decade, and he's best known for the man who wrote Training Day, which won Denzel Washington an Oscar and is this century's epitome of Los Angeles crime drama. All this time later, and Ayer still has stories to tell about the LAPD, though thankfully they're not all about corruption and scandal, as he proves here.

Just another day in the office.

Police officers and best friends, Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) are two of the hottest shots, regularly seen patrolling the worst areas of South Central Los Angeles. End of Watch details their close friendship, rivalries and pranks with other officers, and their everyday lives, which include Zavala's expecting a child with wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Taylor's burgeoning romance with a Janet (Anna Kendrick), whom he meets at school. When the duo discover an even darker side to the city in the form of the Mexican drug cartels, Taylor and Zavala find themselves on the wrong side of Hispanic gangs that have lately been rising in prominence in the area. One night, that brewing conflict will all come to a very violent conclusion

No, ma'am, this isn't Magic Mike.

Strangely, though, that finale really takes its time to come around, meaning that most of the first two acts of the film are not intensely focused on the cartels but the everyday challenges of being a beat cop in LA. Having had a grandfather on the force in Atlantic City, I appreciate how the movie took care to present the men and women of the law as normal people with families and problems and times both good and bad. Ayer humanizes his heroes, and while they're considered among the best of their class, Taylor and Zavala are still unpredictable, prone to both mistakes and heroics. Most importantly, they're men who love their jobs, which makes it incredibly easy to root for them.

Paperwork: the stuff that keeps the world spinning.

Ayer also makes an effort to portray the story from a gritty, street-level perspective. To that end, he has incorporated the popular "found footage" method by showing the footage as being recorded by the two officers via a handicam and some fairly sophisticated flash cameras attached to their uniforms, all as part of a college project for Taylor. It does a great job of making much of the film feel natural and off the cuff, but it does present its own set of problems. For one, while it's feasible for some police helicopter footage to make its way into the film to present a sense of scale, some of the movie contains far less likely cam footage, for instance from the perspective of the Latino gang that just happens to be recording their own misdeeds at the same time as our heroes. It's far less natural than the police footage, and gives far too much away, as I would have preferred more mysterious and less predictable antagonists. Also, the found footage attempt turns in a few clunkers, as more than a few occasions see scenes apparently not captured by anybody's camera, but are shot just the same. Ayer is quoted as saying (in an interview on Open Letters Monthly) that if you're wondering who is carrying the camera, then he lost you. Well, as a critic, he did lose me. It wasn't often, but occasionally my thought process turned to the fact that nobody could have been casually shooting at a certain moment. Thankfully, those were few and far between, and most of the camera efforts were done well enough to escape serious scrutiny.

...And there was much rejoicing.

Of course, none of this would have been worth anything if not for the excellent acting and chemistry of leads Gyllenhall and Pena. Ayer did a great job preparing the two actors for their constant partnership throughout the film, and it really shows in their ability to bounce seemingly random things off one another from scene to scene while still remaining relevant to the story. Gyllenhaal has struggled to define himself in modern Hollywood, going from young talent to pseudo action star to the character-driven performances in which he often excels. While he has sometimes struggled with consistency, that doesn't happen here, and he brings his special brand of intensity that often worms its way into his best work. Pena meanwhile has always been excellent, while not necessarily getting the choicest roles (the lot of Latinos in the movie industry, unfortunately). Still, he's often the best part of even bad movies, and he rewards Ayer's confidence in him by simply being the most wonderful, animated thing on the screen at any given time. Together the pair's antics are as authentic as anything I've seen in theaters this year, and their interaction with the surrounding landscape looks completely natural and familiar. While the film mainly centers around its leads, the pair get a lot of support from Kendrick and Martinez, as well as Frank Grillo, America Ferrera, Cody Horn and David Harbour as their fellow officers.

...here's the bad news...

The only real problem with End of Watch is its mess of an ending, which is almost completely predictable if you actually pay attention to the story (or the trailers, for that matter), and understand the usual cop movie cliches. This isn't really a surprise, as Ayer seems to like his tragedy-laden final acts, and to be fair it really doesn't feel out of place in the grand scheme of things. But for once I would love to be surprised, and Ayer just isn't the director who is going to do that for me. End of Watch is still an inspired production, with much more to like than not. Ayer needs to up his writing skills though, especially if he's going to keep working around treatments of the same subject matter. While I still believe Dredd is the best option for you action lovers in theaters right now, End of Watch is a more than solid second option while awaiting Looper's release this coming weekend.

A Kind of Magic

Of all the films I hoped I would like in 2012, I think I can safely say that I did not imagine going into a movie about male stripping and come away happy with what I had just witnessed. And yet Magic Mike had a lot going for it when it was released to theaters this past weekend. For one, the whole thing was directed by Steven Soderbergh and while I don't always get behind the man's movues, he certainly does solid work with interesting, unique ideas. The second reason I wanted to see this was star Channing Tatum, on whose early days as a stripper in Tampa the screenplay is partially based. For what feels like a long time I have criticized Tatum's largely wooden facial expressions and general lack of acting ability, as he has been allowed to get by mainly on his looks (or in the early Step Up films, his dancing). But this year has been a turning point for the young actor, whose performances in Soderbergh's under-appreciated Haywire and the amazingly funny 21 Jump Street showed a side of the star we hadn't really seen. He's quickly proving that he is more than just a fem-friendly beefcake, and Magic Mike seemed like the kind of film that pushes a man like Tatum to the next level of his career. I knew I'd likely be the only straight male in the theater (as it was a matinee, I turned out to be the only male, period), but I was ready to see something completely different at the cinema this week.

Yes, there is quite a bit of this going on.

And boy, do Tatum and company deliver. Our star plays the titular Magic Mike, a man of many hats. He runs several small businesses, but makes most of his money as a male stripper (I don't think the term "exotic dancer" is ever used; these guys know their job) at Xquisite, a popular club run by unscrupulous manager Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). But what Mike really wants to do, what he has been working hard to do for the past decade, is make custom furniture from broken and discarded items. He's been steadily saving his money, but so far has not been able to get the concept off the ground. When he meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a slacker with no idea what he wants in life, he takes the young man under his wing and introduces him to the business, which Adam gradually gets into despite the disapproval from his sister Brooke (Cody Horn). Xquisite's business is rapidly growing and Dallas is looking to change venues to the more populous and popular Miami. This excites most of the dancers, but Mike is slowly coming to the realization that he doesn't want to be a stripper his whole life, and is ready to settle down. But with the job being seriously lucrative and banks not lending him money to pursue his dreams, how can he possibly step away?

Yes, McConaughey actually dressed like that in the morning.

On one level, it would be easy to label this a movie for women and gay men and leave it at that. In fact, a lot of people believed just that, as ladies made up something like 75% of last weekend's box office for Magic Mike. When you have this much bared male flesh on the big screen, that's just going to happen. But underneath the rippling chests of guys like True Blood's Joe Manganiello or White Collar's Matt Bomer - not to mention the threat of cliched romantic comedy by Tatum and Horn - beats a story about brotherhood, of guys who do what they do to make money, meet women and have fun. Very little of the events depicted here are actually based on Tatum's experiences in the business, but Soderbergh I think does a good job of looking at the industry from multiple angles, from the highs (money, women) to the lows (drugs, dead-end prospects, damaged relationships) with an honest and nonjudgmental eye. Sure, most of the veteran strippers enjoy their jobs, but it's the transformation of Adam in which we see how much it can change a person over even a short period of time. The story makes for something of a cautionary tale, albeit not one nearly so preachy as you might expect.

Even the ladies get in on the skin-baring act.

Both the acting and dancing are top notch and excellently choreographed, and Soderbergh deserves credit for really putting a team of talented performers together and making Magic Mike a full package deal. Tatum continues his incredible run, oozing his usual charm but creating a clear separation in his personality between his civilian life and what he does for a job. Though it might be due to Tatum's experience, Mike might be his deepest and most resonating character to this point, and it is primarily his contributions that make this so much more than a chick flick. I didn't think Cody Horn had a whole lot to do, but Brooke's serious, no-nonsense attitude makes a nice foil for the more laid-back Mike and Adam. And yet she's not such a different or ignorant creature that a pairing between Mike and Brooke is impossible, which is good as the film forces the idea upon us whenever they share the screen.

All he's missing are the bongos...

As for the rest of the cast, most of them have little to do besides reside in states of near-undress, but at least there's a variation in what they bring to the table. I still think Alex Pettyfer is a far more a talented actor than he has been given credit, but lousy box office returns tend to sour you in the face of Hollywood execs. Still, his villainous turn in last year's In Time was the perfect example of lightning in in a bottle, and he continues that trend as a failed college athlete who lacks the drive or commitment to make it in the real world. His is no obvious transformation, but a subtle one that doesn't change the personality of his character, but exploits his already-prevalent weaknesses over the course of the script. In all, a brilliant turn. McConaughey doesn't bring anything new, but is perfectly cast for his southern drawl and ability to pull off a thong. Olivia Munn's topless scene should be all guys need to get into the theater, and her role as a psychology student who met Mike while studying the emotional stability of strippers isn't half bad, to boot. Finally, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez can be applauded for their additions to the cast, even if most of their character development seems to have been scrapped in favor of seriously excellent dance moves.

"Now remember, they have to reach into your pocket to get the candy."

Magic Mike is certainly no fluff piece. The stripping scenes might be outrageous, the romance might be a little forced, and the twists might be somewhat predictable, but this is the type of film that rides high on character and charm, both of which it has in spades. Tatum once again scores, and it would be great if his surprising 2012 could serve as a launching pad for the young man to achieve greater things. It's not often when I am wrong (and even less so when I admit it), but Tatum actually seems to be turning into something special, not just a pretty, unproven face. As far as Magic Mike goes, he MADE it, and if he continues to work with talented directors like Soderbergh and with choice casts like the one here, there's simply no limit to how far he can go.