Oh, heavy is the chest that wears the badge. Brooklyn's Finest revisits the tried and true arc of the poor cop's emotional and financial burden, telling the tale of 3 of New York's boys in blue, all shattered in some way by a system that has failed them. Antoine Fuqua, who brought us Denzel Washington's Oscar winning turn as a heelish rogue cop in Training Day, can make this type of film in his sleep. Unfortunately, far too often it seems as if that was exactly what he was doing.
Richard Gere is Eddie Dugan, longtime cop who after 22 years of service is now one week away from retirement. Ever known anybody movie character to have an uneventful final few days of work? Of course not. In Eddie's case, he's been keeping his head down so long that it's become an art. Watching the violence of the world wash over him as he proceeds along his day. It's taken it's toll, and in between the liquor and the prostitutes he visits he vists he manages to squeeze in a little time to feign suicide.
Ethan Hawke, and his "sad puppy kicked in the tail" eyes is Sal. Sal apparently likes his women barefoot and pregnant. His wife is pregnant with twin bambinos. They already have a whole rack o' kids, and can't afford the ones they have much less more mouths to feed. So what does Sal do? He begins pocketing a little dough from drug busts in order to support them, and he's getting progressively more brazen and careless. He needs to put in a down payment on their new home in order to get out of the moldy, smallish one they live in now. It's worsening his wife's asthma and threatening the kids. Seems like a bit much, doesn't it? That's because it is.
The most effective storyline of the bunch belongs to Don Cheadle as Tango, a deep cover agent working to bust up a drug syndicate. Tango's been under so long now that he's unable to tell which way is up. He's bordering on forgetting which side he's on, but he wants desperately to complete the job so that he'll be given a nice, cushy detective job. Wesley Snipes is his buddy, Caz, fresh out of prison and back in the saddle to lead the crew. But when the suits 'n ties want Tango to set Caz up in order to send him back to jail, Tango is forced to question where his true loyalties lie.
If only they could've focused more on Tango and Caz's storyline. Cheadle and Snipes make a compelling duo in almost every scene they're in together. It's just a shame we never get to find out more of their backstory due to the limits of having so many characters to deal with. Of all the cop figures, it's Tango who is the only one worthy of sympathy, and nobody is better at evoking sympathy better than Don Cheadle. I'm still donating to the Rwandan Refugee Support Group because of him.
Brooklyn's Finest is horribly ill equipped in it's attempt to show the difficulties that cops suffer on a daily basis. Why is Eddie so pained? He's separated from his wife. Ok, I get that. But to the point of suicide? Is it the ridicule he suffers at the hands of the younger, more eager cops, who scoff at the vets lazy attitude towards his job? I'm not getting that impression. He doesn't seem to care. Guilt? Not getting that vibe, either. So why should I feel sorry for him? That is what the mission statement for this film is, right? To make me feel something for these characters? Want to know what I felt? A queasiness in my gut watching Richard Gere get his pole waxed by a skanky pro. There's not enough steel wool in the world to scrub that image from my mind.
Fuqua isn't the entire problem. It's the lazy, by the numbers script that drives this film off the rails. It's pre-occupied with shocking us with brutal violence rather than delving into the hearts of these cops who are walking a dangerously narrow moral highwire. That they are all, in essence, there to serve and protect us should be the glue that holds these disparate stories together. But I couldn't really care less. Been there, done that. I've seen this story too many times.
Dark Blue
,
Narc
, any season of
The Wire
...it's been done. And far better than this.
(because it's script was a strength), Gere has all the energy of a throwrug as an ex-CIA operative paired up with a young upstart FBI Agent(Topher Grace, out of his element) to solve the murder of a politician, believed to have been committed by a bunch of Russians. Of course there's more to it than that, and the trailer pretty much gives exactly what that is away. >sigh< When people complain about movie trailers revealing too much, this is a prime example of what they're talking about....
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