In Brooklyn’s Finest, Anthony Fuqua applies his wonky, gritty vision of police-realism to a triumvirate of NYPD officers whose fates will eventually intermingle prior to the unnecessarily frozen and symbolism-riddled final frame that captures Eddie’s eyes, filled with pent-up rage that is snuffed by twenty two years of learned indifference and futility sullenly staring at the audience. Translation: we are foot-soldiers in a war propagated by city officials whose focus is the statistical bottom line and ammunition for personal promotion.
And, this is how Brooklyn’s Finest works.
Eddie (Richard Gere) is seven days from retirement. He is indifferent and just trying to make it through the week so that he can hand over his shield – which is melodramatically tossed into a box with dozens of other badges. Intended translation: thanks for the twenty-two years. Next!
However, this scene is so heavy handed that it loses any intended steam, not to mention that Eddie is portrayed as a rather lazy curmudgeon, who’s also an alcoholic, which must come from the job and his feeling of futility. In order to battle this futility, Eddie visits Chantel, a prostitute. It’s always the same prostitute, so there is some loyalty implied by their trysts, but this vehicle hits a telephone pole when Eddie professes his love for her a la Pretty Woman.
Unfortunately, Chantel’s a business woman and angry that Eddie has mistaken coke-fueled humping for love-making. (Haven’t we all?) So, this time, Gere’s arrival on the top of a white limo won’t wash the diseases out of this hooker with the heart of gold. There’s very little redemptive about Eddie, so the audience shouldn’t necessarily care if he’s treated like a stray dog when he hands over his gun and badge. And judging by the laughter echoing through this serious crime-drama, no one did.
There’s also Sal (Ethan Hawke), a Brooklyn narcotics officer who is in dire need of a new house. We know this because every time Sal in on screen, he (or someone near him) reminds us that he needs a new house. His wife has asthma that is exacerbated by the wood mold within the walls of his current house. Plus, he has two children already and another two on the way, which seems to function as a makeshift twist since we learn this three-quarters of the way through the movie and are informed by a doctor that one of the twins is smaller than the other – because of the wood mold in the house that’s affecting his wife’s asthma. Seriously, his house problems seemingly rival those folks from Amityville and the little girl from Poltergeist.
Sal has a purpose, but his character exists on a treadmill. He loves his family. He needs a new house. He needs money to buy said house. He is tempted to steal from the drug dealers that he busts to buy this house. Fine setup, but every time we see Sal, we are reminded of each facet of his plight, as if we were going to forget from fifteen minutes prior.
Perhaps even Fuqua knew that the attention of the audience would be driven away from Ethan Hawke’s frantic, overly twitchy performance and drift to the stickiness of the theater floors more often than follow the belabored exposition that injects random religious imagery to suggest that Sal is trying to stay on the righteous path, but he needs to provide for his family. Because they need a new house.
In what should be no surprise, the best part of the film is Don Cheadle, who plays Token (insert racial joke here), an undercover police officer whose faux-life on the streets as a drug trafficker is mingling dangerously close to his rationale, blurring the lines between what he has been employed to do and the life he is leading. While this portion of Brooklyn’s Finest is a truncated version of The Departed, Don Cheadle plays Token with a steady subtlety, so his outbursts are much less hyperbolic that Richard Gere’s or Ethan Hawke’s.
Additionally, Token’s real-life identity, Clarence is a touch different than his street persona, which further shows off Cheadle’s acting ability even if he has been surrounded by villainous caricatures, particularly Agent Smith (Ellen Barkin), whose agenda includes securing herself a “high-profile drug bust.” This isn’t a subtle inference either. It’s a sledgehammer. She couldn’t have been portrayed as more of a villain if she had a greasy, black, handle bar mustache that she continuously twisted betwixt her thumb and forefinger before declaring “I never cared much for baby seals or puppies.”
Aside from Cheadle, the saving grace of Brooklyn’s Finest is the action sequences. For the most part, they are well-handled, and the best are slowly played and avoid the ever-popular quick-cut-hand-cam cinematography, particularly the first scene that finds Sal in a parked car with Carlo (played briefly and solidly by Vincent D’Onofrio). There is no soundtrack, so there’s no intended build-up to a crescendo, but when it hits, it takes you by surprise and establishes the duality of Sal’s character.
Likewise, the final act of Brooklyn’s Finest is shot quite well. Even if the coincidental arrival of all three officers to a single apartment building is rather derivative, and thematically unrelated, two of the three confrontation scenes are steadily handled and provide the majority of suspense from the entire movie. On the other hand, the third confrontation borders on silly, and is something out of Friday the 13th or any other horror film where the bad guy refuses to die even though a bullet has torn straight through his heart.
DYL MAG Score: 6
