Director Antoine Fuqua began his career by helming music videos for artists such as Prince, Usher, and Coolio. He graduated to feature filmmaking with Chow Yun-Fat’s debut in Hollywood, The Replacement Killers. Fuqua scored big with the gritty cop drama, Training Day, which was bolstered by an Oscar-winning performance from Denzel Washington as the dirty cop to end all dirty cops. Fuqua returns to the urban drama with Brooklyn’s Finest, featuring three separate storylines set in the projects of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York.
Fuqua reunites with Training Day star Ethan Hawke for the first storyline. Hawke is Det. Sal Procida who finds an honest cop’s salary isn’t covering the bills. He’s got three kids, a pregnant wife (Lili Taylor) with asthma and twins on the way, and a house that’s too small with mold in the walls. In order to make ends meet, Sal has been taking money from drug busts. When we first meet him, he puts a bullet into the head of one criminal before robbing him.
Don Cheadle is Det. Clarence “Tango” Butler, an undercover cop who’s been out in the field too long. All he wants is a cushy desk job and a chance to get his live back. That chance may come when Tango’s old friend, Casanova “Caz” Phillips (Wesley Snipes), is released from prison. The feds and Tango’s C.O. want him to set Caz up in a sting operation so they can boot him back to the penitentiary for no other reason than he’d be a big bust. Tango is deeply conflicted as Caz had saved his life and genuinely seems to want to go straight.
Richard Gere is Eddie Dugan, a uniformed cop and veteran on the force. He’s led an unremarkable career and is only days away from retirement. He finds solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle and in the arms of a prostitute (Shannon Kane) who is the furthest thing from Julia Roberts. The brass wants Eddie to mentor a few rookies and he’s reluctant about it. Eddie’s advice to his first rookie is ”…eyes open and keep walking.” The rookie is disgusted with Eddie’s utter apathy to the job, but Eddie has absolutely no desire to be a hero.
The cast also includes Will Patton as Tango’s commanding officer, Ellen Barkin as a federal agent, Brian F. O’Byrne as Sal’s partner, and The Wire’s Michael K. Williams as one of Caz’s partners in crime. The screenplay was penned by first-timer Michael C. Martin who was a train conductor for the New York subway. He was still working his day job up until a week before shooting.
There have been quite a lot of these multi-tiered pictures in recent years. Crash, Syriana, and Babel are probably the most high-profile while other films like The Air I Breathe, Powder Blue, Crossing Over, and The Burning Plain failed to garner similar critical acclaim. Brooklyn’s Finest will likely fall into the latter category.
Brooklyn’s Finest is essentially a collection of nearly every cop movie cliché. At first glance, the only thing missing is the perpetually angry police captain. We have world weary cops, religiously conflicted cops, dirty cops, clean cops, experienced cops, rookie cops, etc. The film lacks any sort of nuances or deeper layers. The stories run parallel to each other though Fuqua and Martin toss in a few obligatory scenes where the characters bump into each other, both figuratively and literally. All three plot threads build to a contrived conclusion in which the trio of main characters arrives in the same neighborhood at the same time to meet their fates.
Brooklyn’s Finest treads into more than familiar territory. The acting is strong and the most interesting scenes feature the always-dependable Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes who play well off each other. Snipes hasn’t starred in a theatrical release since Blade: Trinity and this is a welcome return. It is unfortunate the material is so weak and formulaic.
Rating: **
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