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High body count in bleak, barberous cop drama
By David Germain |
March 14, 2010, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IRONY underlies the title of "Brooklyn's Finest," a drama about cops who are anything but fine at their jobs. And director Antoine Fuqua pounds that irony home with a sledgehammer.
Fuqua rounded up a fine cast - Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes and the director's "Training Day" co-star Ethan Hawke.
They all deliver with a fine sense of urgency and toughness appropriate to the dark story. The production values are quite fine, Fuqua crafting a harsh urban landscape where vice can flourish.
So why does "Brooklyn's Finest" turn into such a mess? Well, there is the body count, for starters. Fuqua and first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin seem to think the solution to the city's problems is a dramatic reduction in population.
They kill off lots of people in nasty ways with the remorseless glee of a cruel boy torturing insects.
Martin's screenplay has the basis of three interesting stories about cops in various degrees of distress or burnout.
Uniformed patrolman Eddie Dugan (Gere) is trying to get through his final week before retirement without making the slightest impact, which he has grown adept at as his years on the beat turned him into a lump of passivity.
Murderous narcotics detective Sal Procida (Hawke) will stop at nothing to score cash from drug dealers so he can put a down-payment on a better house for his sickly wife (Lili Taylor) and their growing brood of children.
Undercover cop Clarence "Tango" Butler (Cheadle) is ready to crack from the strain of running with drug peddlers and torn by a sense of betrayal against kingpin Caz (Snipes), who saved his life while Tango was building his cover in prison.
These men occasionally bump into one another, but "Brooklyn's Finest" mostly spins three disjointed chronicles, the action never adding up to anything more than its grisly parts as gunfire and bloodshed continually erupt around Eddie, Sal and Tango.
Other than a few dashes of humor managed by Hawke, the movie is relentlessly bleak and barbarous.
Fuqua rounded up a fine cast - Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes and the director's "Training Day" co-star Ethan Hawke.
They all deliver with a fine sense of urgency and toughness appropriate to the dark story. The production values are quite fine, Fuqua crafting a harsh urban landscape where vice can flourish.
So why does "Brooklyn's Finest" turn into such a mess? Well, there is the body count, for starters. Fuqua and first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin seem to think the solution to the city's problems is a dramatic reduction in population.
They kill off lots of people in nasty ways with the remorseless glee of a cruel boy torturing insects.
Martin's screenplay has the basis of three interesting stories about cops in various degrees of distress or burnout.
Uniformed patrolman Eddie Dugan (Gere) is trying to get through his final week before retirement without making the slightest impact, which he has grown adept at as his years on the beat turned him into a lump of passivity.
Murderous narcotics detective Sal Procida (Hawke) will stop at nothing to score cash from drug dealers so he can put a down-payment on a better house for his sickly wife (Lili Taylor) and their growing brood of children.
Undercover cop Clarence "Tango" Butler (Cheadle) is ready to crack from the strain of running with drug peddlers and torn by a sense of betrayal against kingpin Caz (Snipes), who saved his life while Tango was building his cover in prison.
These men occasionally bump into one another, but "Brooklyn's Finest" mostly spins three disjointed chronicles, the action never adding up to anything more than its grisly parts as gunfire and bloodshed continually erupt around Eddie, Sal and Tango.
Other than a few dashes of humor managed by Hawke, the movie is relentlessly bleak and barbarous.
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