Brooklyn’s Finest

Released:5th March 2010

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Stars:Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes

Certificate:18

Reviewer: Luke Walkley

I had high expectations before viewing this movie; the idea of a darker, seedier ‘Crash’ ticked all the right boxes for me. However living up to the expectations made by 2005’s Best Picture Oscar winner was always going to be tough.

The story follows the lives of three New York Police officers, Eddie (Richard Gere) is the Cop who’s days from retirement and is asked to carry out one last assignment. Tango (Don Cheadle) has been undercover too long and has become friends with the man he was originally targeting, Caz (Wesley Snipes). Thirdly, is Sal (Ethan Hawke) who is the Police officer struggling to provide a suitable house for his children and his pregnant wife.

The individual stories are nothing original. Same old plot lines, typical personas and the like. Because of this, throughout the film I found myself waiting for that final crescendo. The film is littered with non-essential characters and sub-plot, (one part in particular where Eddie (Gere) visits a prostitute of whom he has come to care for, becomes completely pointless in the grand scale of things yet 10 minutes or so of the film involved her) This becomes frustrating as the long running time of 132 minutes tends to drag in places.

The stand out performance was that of Ethan Hawke, his story was the most heartfelt and he brought a ‘sympathise with the bad guy’ element to his character that gave the film a different edge.

As I mentioned previously, comparisons with the likes of Crash and The Departed were always going to be drawn. Therefore it needed something special, something unseen previously. That was not the case and this is the movies biggest falling point. The film is drawn out for such a long time, that when it comes to its climax it seems to end almost instantly. The dreams of a big finish are shattered and then it’s pretty much over.

The lack of twists and the big ending that was needed bring this film down most of all, unnecessary characters and scenes can be overlooked as the acting by the reasonably big name cast is brilliant. Each actor giving a different approach to the clichéd characters they portrayed gave the film that boost it needed.

This is by no means a bad film; it’s just not good enough to make the grade set by previous films in its genre. All in all, Brooklyn’s Finest seems more like Brooklyn’s Best Attempt.