Brooklyn's Finest

Don’t go into “Brooklyn’s Finest” expecting a particularly innovative or intriguing crime film—it is certainly no “French Connection.” Director Antione Fuqua doesn’t retread his 2001 police drama “Training Day,” though if he had, “Brooklyn’s Finest” would have been much more satisfying. While boasting an all-star lineup, including Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Wesely Snipes, the film remains a pedestrian melodrama.

The movie follows three interwoven stories concerning a single Brooklyn police precinct situated in the most violent part of the borough, all of which come together in a violent conclusion. In a concurrent storyline, the NYPD attempts to regain the community’s trust after an officer from the precinct shoots and kills an honor student from the projects.

Detective Salvatore “Sal” Procidia (Hawke) is a poor cop with a lot to lose. As the film progresses, Proicidia’s spouse falls increasingly ill due to a mold problem in their run-down home. In order to save his wife and their twins, Procidia must make a down payment for a new house in just a few days, but he doesn’t have nearly enough money. To meet his deadline, he turns to robbing drug dealers during busts, even going so far as to break into a dealer’s apartment after a bust gets canceled. Though this is the most compelling story in the film, Hawke’s performance is forgettable and uninspired, lacking any of the conviction or depth he displayed as Jake Hoyt in “Training Day.” In the end, Procidia comes off as a whiney hothead who can’t see that the end doesn’t always justify the means, and he gets what he deserves.

Other actors, however, fare slightly better. Gere plays Officer Eddie Dugan, who has a week left until his retirement. This has been the day he has been living for during his time of service, and his lack of drive is evident from his fellow officers’ disdain for him. After his retirement, Dugan loses his only connection to another person, his sometime prostitute. With absolutely nothing left, Dugan finally decides to act in a final dramatic­­­—and clichéd—scene. Through his intentionally flat acting, Gere provides the lifelessness and lack of soul the character of Dugan needs, making the performance quite admirable given the limited role that Gere has to work with.

The stories of Detective Clarence “Tango” Butler (Cheadle) and Casanova “Caz” Phillips (Snipes) are interwoven in the film. Butler is an undercover narcotics cop in the projects, who has risen to the top of the business over the past few years. However, when Phillips, Butler’s old prison buddy and formerly powerful drug dealer, gets released from incarceration, problems arise. Cheadle is as charismatic as ever, endowing his character with the most emotion and authentic passion in the entire film. Snipes, while not as strong as Cheadle, also successfully expresses the fear and panic of his character, who has fallen from great heights and is now trapped in his former life, unable to escape.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the film is the fact that Fuqua never makes effective use of the film’s actual New York location, excluding several overhead shots of the projects. In fact, the only neighborhood in Brooklyn mentioned in the entire film is Bedford-Stuyvesant, and that is only in passing. On top of using essentially stock characters in the script, Fuqua does nothing to give the film any legitimate New York feel.

From the film’s unoriginal storyline to the overly violent and unnecessary massacre that punctuates its conclusion (the ending of the film was reshot following a poor reception at a screening at Sundance this year), “Brooklyn’s Finest” affords little recommendation other than its stellar cast.