The Righter and The Wronger

Flying Bullets Dispense Final Justice In Crawling Melodrama
by
 Morgan P Salvo

Going into Brooklyn’s Finest I didn’t expect something special but I came out somewhat amazed at how bland it really was. It’s a lame attempt at combining Training Day and Crash, coming off like a mediocre television crime drama.Finest begins with an ominous black car silhouetted in front of NY cityscape, kicked off by Vincent D’Onofrio delivering a foreboding monologue about what’s “righter and wronger” in the fight between lawmakers and lawbreakers. We lose his character quickly but then the trio of stories and characters begin. We get Dugan (Richard Gere), a drunken suicidal “doesn’t-give-a-shit” loser cop with seven days left before retirement and Sal (Ethan Hawke), a Catholic guilt ridden, crooked, sociopathic narcotics cop ready to kill and swindle money for the good of his pregnant wife and growing family. Then there’s Tango (Don Cheadle), a conflicted undercover cop deep into the projects drug scene, dealing with the dilemma of busting his long lost pal Caz (Wesley Snipes) who once saved his life. Tango and Caz…get it? Other stereotypical characters are Will Patton as the grizzled nice guy detective and Ellen Barkin, resembling a cornered bulldog, doing her tough-mama-agent routine.

The slow paced bleakness that Brooklyn’s tries to convey at times comes off like Scarface on Quaaludes. Amidst an obvious Mean Streets set up that never really attaches itself to the overall flow, the bullet hailing and slug-fest eruptions only seem to bend backwards on the storyline and fall flat. Languishing in cliché city, the dichotomies run rampant with really bad writing mixed with inventive street lingo. To spice things up there are a fair amount of bullet holes and blood oozing. The pathos and righteousness is ladled on so thick that it begins to stagnate. When all these characters finally intersect, it’s too late to care. In a good ensemble piece movie we’re supposed to feel empathy or sympathy with most of the prominently shown characters. Here we’re numb to people who deserve everything they get because at base they are all despicable. What’s needed was to amp up the stakes by making this a more engaging feature for the audience-- this is just another case of watching reprehensible guys squirm. Wesley Snipes garners the most sympathy and he’s a gang drug lord--- go figure.
The actors give what they might consider Oscar winning performances. What we see is heavy handed EMOTING. Wherein director Antoine Fuqua in Training Day had Denzel smacking you upside the head with his over-the-top performance, here we only get glimmers of that kind of bravura as the three leads slow burn their way into self inflicted sorrow, deep guilt, suffering and eventually tantrums. Snipes’ phoned in performance from a six year screen absence is a let down.
I can just see first timer scriptwriter Michael C. Martin, who grew up in the Brooklyn projects saying, “And then they will all meet in a hail of bullets in the projects and justice will be dispensed.” But sadly it just feels pushed, contrived and washed out. Face it, from Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant to Hill Street Blues we’ve seen all this before. While Finest is supposed to be gritty and heavy it’s just another example of making a mess of things with no one to clean it up. This vapid melodrama lacks the intensity it strives for. While the audience is force fed the notion that everyone’s justified by taking crime or the law into their own hands, well, that’s just “wronger.” Fuqua develops sufficient sleazy atmosphere and propels some momentum during the final 30 minutes but it takes way too long to get there. But after wading through the muck of mediocrity it doesn’t seem worth the wait.

Brooklyn’s Finest
Starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
2 stars