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