Chances are, if director Antoine Fuqua’s name rings a bell at all, it’s for his 2001 cop drama known as Training Day. Since then, things have been fairly quiet on the Fuqua front. It’s not that he hasn’t been creating movies, it’s just that they haven’t been garnering the attention that Training Day warranted (due largely to a fantastic, movie-carrying performance by Denzel Washington).
Brooklyn’s Finest is Fuqua’s latest cop-a-thon. Rather than focusing on a single storyline, the film focuses around three officers, each at different points in their career, each with their own stories. Richard Gere plays an officer nearing retirement. Decades on the job have worn him down to a point of complete apathy and self-destruction. Don Cheadle plays an undercover agent who, after such a long time living a lie, is starting to lose himself in his cover. Finally, Ethan Hawke portrays a family man with deep financial burdens, tempted to cross the line to get the money he needs.
Each of these men has been tainted by the job in their own unique ways. The film is a compelling character drama where most of the ‘action’ is in the character development itself. The actors really all need to be commended for their performances, as each of them bring to life what many might consider to be fairly stereotypical cop-clichĂ©s. Sure, a lot of the storyline may feel retread, but the shear level of grit characteristic in all of Fuqua’s films combined with the solid writing and performances by the leads, more than compensates.
Wesley Snipes also swaggers into the film as a drug dealer freshly out of prison. His charismatic performance typically steals the show whenever he and Cheadle have some sort of shady business. While perhaps not as deep and engaging as the leads, Snipes holds his own as a solid supporting actor who simply needed a bit more screen time to round out a few rough edges and unanswered questions about his character.
Brooklyn’s Finest takes an interesting approach in its presentation, in that it never felt like it was about any one of the leads in particular – similar in feel to Crash. Each man has their own segment and their own time, and the story breathes better because of it. Occasionally, characters and storylines intersect, but for the most part, the movie plays out like three separate mini-movies. Interestingly enough, there is often a symmetry among these stories, as periods of tension and action are paralleled within each character’s plotline, making for an interesting dynamic and engaging pace.
Overall, Brooklyn’s Finest is a great, gritty police film similar in feel to Training Day in many aspects. It will surely be overlooked this weekend because of hysteria over The Oscars and Alice in Wonderland, but fans of the genre should definitely take a look at this well developed character drama.
