MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | YOUTUBE NEWS EDITORIALS | EVENTS | AUDIO | ESSAYS | ARCHIVES | CONTACT |
 
PHOTOS | COMING SOON| EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES ||
HOME

                                                           
Friday, March 5, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW
Brooklyn's Finest
The Good, The Bad And The Very Bloody

Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes in Antoine Fuqua's "Brooklyn's Finest", which opened today in the U.S. and Canada. 
Philip Caruso/Overture Films

By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW 
Friday, March 5, 2010

Fierce and unrelenting, "Brooklyn's Finest" works brilliantly as a teeming urban western where turf and loyalty get ripped to shreds within several brotherhoods in Brooklyn, New York.  Antoine Fuqua's film opened today in the U.S. and Canada.  "Brooklyn's Finest" depicts three fraternities torn asunder: the world of undercover detectives, the drug-dealing ne'er do wells, and everyday cops from the wrong side of the tracks.  Sometimes these worlds will cross, and violently. 

Very violently.

Richard Gere is an NYPD officer in his final week of work after two thankless decades on patrol.  In basketball parlance he's just running out the clock until retirement.  He however, has just one last assignment: to babysit a new guy. 

Piece of cake, right? 

Call it "Training Week".  Maybe. 

Indeed, Mr. Fuqua covered the gritty terrain of police misconduct and loyalty in his 2001 L.A.-based film "Training Day", and while no Oscars are likely to result in his latest, Ethan Hawke's character from that film has apparently arrived on the east coast and brought some very bad habits with him in "Brooklyn's Finest".  Mr. Hawke plays a Brooklyn cop who takes a shortcut here and there.  He is memorable.

Don Cheadle and Will Patton are submerged in a fraternal battle of undercover officers, and Wesley Snipes, whose chemistry with Mr. Cheadle is the best thing about Mr. Fuqua's film, makes a return to the big screen in style.  There's some additional great casting here, particularly Brían F. O'Byrne as a cop with a conscience.  Mr. O'Byrne, a great New York actor, has frequently starred on stage and in such films as Sidney Lumet's "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead", and he seems to suggest a better way forward, a hybrid between Rampart/Rodney King and the kind of police officer many once trusted so fervently.

Mr. Fuqua's film carries some of the hard-boiled sensibilites of Mr. Lumet's "Q&A" (1990), with its violence and conversations about race.  Often gripping and intense, "Brooklyn's Finest" illustrates that the tenuous threads of "brother's keeper" are forever tested.  The film's violence is authentic, sudden and graphic.  The victims are almost exclusively of one race, and some viewers are likely to object to that, as well as to the way at least one woman is portrayed.  This reviewer is liable to agree with those who cite the insidious aspects of this, but also with the reality that sadly, too often a disproportionate amount of violence is visited on innocents.  In "Brooklyn's Finest", many of the victims aren't.  They're rough trade, not because of who they are but because of what they do.

There are cheeky references, including to "Sea Of Love", the song, which one character hums, and the film, from which one actor (Ellen Barkin) appears here.  She too makes an impression.

The director has a habit of leaving one last man standing, that last domino, strangely untainted but never forgotten.  In Mr. Fuqua's urban western, which plays sometimes like "White Heat", there's an ethic that repeatedly gets violated.  Trust comes at a premium, and essentially three films play both together and separately.  Mr. Fuqua and screenwriter Michael Martin try to take on too much at times, and it very nearly becomes their undoing.  Still, there are interesting characters, some who are explored more than others.  Some are trying to hold on to innocence, or at least pursue it amidst an adulterated world, in order to remain sane.  There's a scene that symbolically illustrates this, and brilliantly, towards the film's conclusion. 

The bottom line is this: in Mr. Fuqua's Brooklyn, cops and criminals can't breathe easily for more than five minutes, and neither can we.


With: Michael K. Williams, Lili Taylor, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ellen Barkin, Shannon Kane, Lela Rochon, Isiah Whitlock.


"Brooklyn's Finest" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for bloody violence throughout, strong sexuality, nudity, drug content and pervasive language.  The film's duration is two hours and 13 minutes.

COPYRIGHT 2010.  POPCORNREEL.COM.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.                   Follow popcornreel on TwitterFOLLOW



Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar here.

Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times - here



SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE REVIEWS RSS FEED

MOVIE REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | YOUTUBE NEWS EDITORIALS | EVENTS | AUDIO | ESSAYS | ARCHIVES | CONTACT |
 
PHOTOS | COMING SOON| EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES ||
HOME