One Saturday morning when I lived in downtown LA, I was walking to a yoga class when a car chase blew down the street right next to me. The car being pursued was screaming through stop lights and clipping pedestrians before it slammed into the side of a minivan right in front of me. Multiple police vehicles roared onto the scene and every cop jumped out of their big stupid cars to pin this one guy to the ground (who was running away, not brandishing a weapon or anything).
Not a single one went to check on the people in the minivan.
This is one tiny injustice that I personally witnessed in a mountain of evidence against the valorization of the LAPD.
In the interest of fairness, one time I did an illegal U-turn right in front of a cop and he didn't give me a ticket. That was in WeHo though, so probably not LAPD.
As far as I can tell, the following are the only two films in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a member of the LAPD. They were both somewhat annoying to watch for different reasons.
ACABEJG.
End of Watch
Written & Directed by David Ayer
End of Watch was hard to watch for a couple of reasons:
Quite violent!
There is a conceit where Jake is in a college class and he's recording the action (for class!) on his phone. With that plus a lot of bodycam footage, there's a lot of handheld shakiness that is very annoying.
There is a really long scene at a wedding where the couple does a choreographed dance.
Jake and Michael Peña are partners in the LAPD, working in South Central. They are recently back on the streets after an officer-involved shooting. We see them patrol the streets, come up against gang violence, drug and human trafficking, etc etc etc cop movie etc.
Although Jake is not trapped in any type of device or room for this film, a lot of it takes place in a car with Jake and Michael just shooting the shit. Those scenes are nice. They do play a very honest and lovely male friendship (even if it's predicated on killing people) and they have great friend-chemistry. Friendmistry? Platonistry?
Jake & Michael apparently went on upwards of 50 ridealongs with law enforcement before shooting this film (which only took 22 days, kind of crazy). I'm not saying that's not dedication to your craft or whatever, but you did not get it after like 5 or 10? Also they are both extremely good actors I bet they could have done as good by just like watching some YouTube videos, you know? But maybe it was the time in the back of a cop car that helped them develop that friendical reaction.
Jake ends up meeting and falling in love with Anna Kendrick.
At the risk of sounding like a bad feminist: I do not like Anna Kendrick. Every straight white man you talk to is like "she seems cool" and like, no, she doesn't. She seems very annoying. No one has put it better than my brilliant friend Nicole: "she seems like someone's niece."
Also, she and Jake have no chemistry. Watch any press interview with JG and you’ll see that he has better chemistry with Stephen Colbert than with Anna Kendrick. The fact that they end up getting married (and doing the aforementioned stupid dance) is a whole section of the film that would have been so much more tolerable with someone else in the role (maybe Colbert?)
Why don’t more people make movies with MY PERSONAL TASTES in mind?!
I can forgive casting one of my least favorite actresses but I'll never forgive the wraparound sunglasses.
After the wedding, a bunch more cop movie shit happens. Shoot outs and rivalries and a very gory attack on David Harbour and then at the end one of them dies.
Here's an interesting fact: as of 2025, 235 LAPD officers have died in the line of duty. Ever. That includes those that died from:
automobile crashes (25)
COVID-19 (8)
struck by a streetcar (2)
This isn't to make light of cops dying, it's just, well how about this fact: in 2023, 176 pedestrians died in Los Angeles. In one year. From walking. So when films lionize cops as like, constantly in the line of fire, getting stabbed in the eyeball, etc….it's just, I don't know, maybe I'm just jealous because there are no movies about how brave I am for jaywalking.
RATINGS
Natty or Juiced? Natty but probably considering a light PED regimen at this point.
Romantic Chemistry: Anna/Jake: -10/100 ; The lesbian gang member and every woman sharing a scene with her: 100/100
Gyllenhaaliness: 5/10 I don't know, this one really rang hollow to me. His weird LAPD intellectual thing just didn't really fit. The sunglasses, the shaved head. He did a good job but it was not peak Gyllenhaaliness for me, personally.
The Guilty
Adapted Screenplay by Nic Pizzolatto
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
We've already experienced a young Jake Gyllenhaal acting an entire film inside a bubble. In the future, we'll visit an older Jake Gyllenhaal acting half of a film in a kind of dark, metal pod/sensory deprivation tank. Today, let's visit Jake Gyllenhaal acting an entire film in an inexplicably dark 911 dispatch center. You can't say the man lacks range.
The Guilty is a remake of a 2018 Danish film of the same name that I have not watched. But everyone knows we as Americans absolutely cannot be bothered with subtitles, so let's give this juicy one man show to our friends Jake Gyllenhaal and Antoine Fuqua to remake for us.
Jake plays a cop who is put on 911 duty because of a questionable shooting (WOW THAT'S TWICE, it's almost like cops just love to shoot people even in Jake Gyllenhaal movies), for which he is about to go to trial. Also, there are forest fires raging in LA as the events of the movie unfold. Cool cool cool great for my mental health already.
As Jake takes calls, tries to get through to his ex-wife and child, and generally breaks down he ends up on the phone with a kidnapping victim. He uses the power of Phone Jake to find her children, her ex husband's apartment, and eventually, to find her.
There are a number of twists that I won't spoil. Does that mean I recommend you watch it? Well, if you like to look at Jake Gyllenhaal's face while he acts his little heart out then probably, yeah. Everyone who has seen the Dutch version says its better but maybe they just prefer slightly different looking Jakobs:
When I tell you this entire film is Jake Gyllenhaal acting into a phone I am not exaggerating. This movie was filmed over 11 days in November of 2020 and every credited actor except Jake and 2 others are only voices. Ethan Hawke, Jake brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Bill Burr. They all phone it in.
Fun fact, one of the two other actors that actually appears on screen is this guy:
Love that for him.
RATINGS
Natty or Juiced? Bis & tris look frankly huge in his polo. Juiced.
Phone Acting: A+. He was born to do it. Can't wait to add more films to my Jake Gyllenhaal Yells into a Phone list on letterboxd.
Gyllenhaaliness: 8.5/10