Jeff Beck Reviews: Brooklyn’s Finest
Director Antoine Fuqua returns to the underworld of cops who are corrupt and on the edge, where violence is an everyday fact. Fuqua previously explored this world in “Training Day,” except that in his most recent film, “Brooklyn’s Finest,” he has three stories running simultaneously instead of just focusing on one.
The first involves a cop named Sal (Ethan Hawke). From the opening scene, we find out that he is corrupt, stealing drug money for his own purposes, but as it turns out, that purpose is to buy a new house for his wife, Angela (Lili Taylor), and their many children. The place they live in now is far too small for all of them, and with twins on the way, they will need a new place very soon. Sal goes on drug busts for one purpose only: to find money to make a down payment on a house.
The second story involves a cop, Eddie (Richard Gere), who is only seven days away from retirement. For his last few days on the job, his boss has given him the task of training rookies. He does this with two different newcomers to the force until something goes horribly wrong.
The final story is about an undercover cop, Tango (Don Cheadle), who has been undercover for so long that he longs to get his real life back. He is good friends with a recently paroled ex-con, Caz (Wesley Snipes), who believes that there is a snitch in the gang, but doesn’t know who. Tango regularly reports to his contact, Bill (Will Patton), who introduces him to Agent Smith (Ellen Barkin). She wants him to set up his friend Caz with the reward being a promotion to detective, but Tango is obviously reluctant to do this.
The most interesting of these stories is the one that involves Cheadle’s undercover cop. It brings up some interesting psychological questions and others about where your true loyalties lie after being someone else for so long. In a sense, this could have been a great film if the filmmakers had chosen to make the entire movie about this one character and what he’s going through.
The one story that could have been done completely away with was Gere’s. Every time it cut to his story, his character was always doing the same thing, which was brooding over the situation that he finds himself in. This became repetitive very quickly and could have been lost from the film without it affecting the other two stories at all. You know it’s not good when it goes to Gere’s story and you find yourself wanting the film to get back to either of the other two stories right away.
It’s not that Hawke’s character didn’t brood over his situation, it’s just that his story was more engaging. Sal was also a more motivated character, doing what he thought was right, despite the obvious conclusion that it was not the right thing to do, though finding himself in a desperate situation in which he wants to help his family makes his actions somewhat understandable. Sal’s story comes down to an obvious ending, but it remains engaging because we don’t know when or where it’s going to happen.
Overall, the main problem with the film is that we have seen this kind of material played out much more effectively in films like Fuqua’s “Training Day.” We’ve seen corrupt cops and cops on the edge several times before. The main reason to see this would be to enjoy the performances from Cheadle and Hawke, but it’s just not worth having to sit through one dull storyline and another with an obvious direction to get to the more interesting one.
The two good storylines do eventually connect, leaving the third strand loose, only going further to prove that it was not needed. Although Fuqua has already done this material, he is at least able to make some of it engaging, just not enough to recommend sitting through a runtime of over two hours to find it.
2.5/4 stars.
You can read this and other movie reviews in my column at The Richmond Examiner.
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