On the couch

End of Watch is, at its heart, a love story. It might look like a cop movie and sound like a cop movie but it’s really about the friendship between Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña).

Presented in an episodic, “here’s-a-bunch-of-stuff-that-happened” style, fans of SouthLAnd, a much-lauded TV police procedural set in Los Angeles, will find themselves on very familiar ground as they traverse the highways and byways of the City of Angels.

The set-up is simple enough. Officers Taylor and Zavala are just back on the job after a month on suspension. A part time student, one of Taylor’s homework assignment prompts him to start filming his on-the-job antics, carrying a camcorder with him everywhere and encouraging his partner to join him in wearing small button cams.

Fear not, however, while “found footage” does feature heavily, it isn’t gimmicky and merges well with the rest of the story.

While the two are far from the smartest or cleanest cut coppers on the block – in fact their goofiness borders on annoying dumbass from time-to-time – they’re not bad cops and, over the course of the film, get into, and out of a number of scrapes ranging from a burning house chock full of kids to an argumentative gang-banger who wants to try a little MMA with a copper in his front room.

Initially there seems to be very little rhyme or reason to their professional engagements and this is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. Because there’s no real story arc to concentrate on, the interaction of Taylor and Zavala becomes the film’s focus. Another humanising factor are the pair’s partners, Zavala’s wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Taylor’s girlfriend Janet (Anna Kendrick).

Fortunately Gyllenhall and Peña are fantastic as the tough but goofy pair. Riding around the streets of LA with the two bantering back and forth is anything but a chore and the action, when it does happen, is as engrossing as the best TV cop shows.

While a plot of sorts emerges after about 40 minutes that ties together some apparently unrelated incidents, End of Watch isn’t the sort of flick that will make you gasp as disparate plot threads are woven together into a magnificent tapestry of “wow!”

The denouement is shocking and arrived at organically but it wouldn’t mean anything if the previous 80-or so minutes hadn’t been spent getting to know Taylor and Zavala.

A sharp and stylish cop flick with some great performances, End of Watch is a new take on the genre and will surprise even the most hard-boiled of cop flick fans.

Here Comes the Boom, on the other hand, is a silly film based on a silly idea.

It’s got heart though and, like it’s hero, Scott Voss (Kevin James), that counts for a lot because other than that, the innate charm of its leads and a couple of amusing gags, that’s pretty much all its got.

James plays disillusioned schlub Scott Voss. Formerly an award-winning teacher, he’s been ground down to a nub by the daily grind of life and the school system.

The fire in his more than spacious belly is reignited when the school’s management budget cuts that will see the music teacher Marty (Henry Winkler) fired and the entire subject cut. This is especially galling to Voss as his musical mate has also just found out that his missus is pregnant, making impending unemployment a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

So what ingenious idea does Scott hit upon to raise the $50,000 necessary to save his pal and the legion of budding Mozarts?

MMA. To the uninitiated, MMA or mixed martial arts, is a hyper-kinetic combination of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and Brazilian jiujitsu played out in a caged ring.

After finding out that, at its highest levels, even a losing fighter can make up to $10 grand, he figures that he can parlay his colligate wrestling prowess into a losing record.

Seeking the assistance of his mate Niko (Bas Rutten) a former fighter, full-time nutcase and personal trainer, Voss quickly gets on the well-worn path of all sports flicks and takes him from humble beginnings to the big show in under two hours.

Along the way there is the usual dose of antics, chicanery as well as a some twists and turns that don’t really count as either twisty or turny.

James brings his trademark likeability to Voss and benefits from his own years of amateur MMA training, showing off some moves that you wouldn’t expect from a younger, fitter man, let alone a performer of his… ahem… stature. It also means the fight scenes aren’t a frenzy of cutaways and body doubles.

The real star of the show, however,  is Rutten, a hyperactive Dutch headcase who has screen presence to burn and, as a former champion and pioneer of MMA, ticks all the credibility boxes who’s already known to MMA fans. He’s a natural presence on screen and, like Gina Carano, he has the physical presence to back up any tough guy schtick he tries to pull off.

A likeable enough bit of nonsense, Here Comes the Boom fails to bring enough funny to really qualify as a comedy worth recommending. There’s a couple of good gags for the MMA fans out there – mostly funny cameos by popular fighters, trainers and personalities and references to well-known stories – but nothing that distinguishes it as anything other than an honourable failure.