Review of Brooklyn's Finest (2010) by Roy M — 03 Jan 2011

Wow what a sloppy film this was. With some very good actors this film has three stories all going at once, and only one of them was interesting. I'll start with the story I found to be the most interesting seeing as how it's the first one introduced in the film. Ethan Hawke is a cop who wants to get his growing family into a bigger house. With very low funds he starts to take drug money, and other various forms of dirty money by killing, and in some cases letting criminals flee because he just wants the money. Hawke gives a great performance, and for me is the only major saving grace in the film.

Don Cheedle is an undercover cop who is trying to get out of his work and land a sweet desk job so he can try to gain back some sense of sanity, but to get this job he must first help bring down a friend, and criminal who saved his life Caz (Wesley Snipes). This story seems interesting, but is in fact actually quite boring.

The third story going on in all of this mess is Richard Gere's who is a cop a week away from retirement who has been on the force way too long. With nothing left to care about he just wants it to all be over so he can just move on, but before he can do this he gets stuck in a rookie training program that helps kind of give him a bit of a wake up call about his own life and a path not traveled.

The real major problem is the ending it sort of just happens and the audience is left with a is that it type of feeling. Now if they really wanted to do this cliche story any bit of good they would've made it into some sort of television series. Antoine Fuqua is a talented director no doubt about it, but he dropped the ball here, and hopefully he does better on his next enevor.