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Top Critics (33)
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DVD (6)
Any movie that ends on a freeze frame of Richard Gere walking stoically away from a crime scene teeming with police car lights can't be all good.
As directed by Antoine Fuqua, the film is well-acted, occasionally hair-raising but ultimately made from stale material.
Tawdry, slick and self-consciously gritty.
The problem for filmmakers trying to make this kind of movie is that they are now operating in a post-Wire world.
On second thought, Brooklyn's Finest does indeed provide a new genre twist. This must be the only cop movie ever made where a character is driven off the deep end by mold.
The movie is wounded, but it's also too tough to kill.
Paints with grimy authenticity a despairing, warts-and-all portrait of cops and criminals, turning the idea of the title on its head and then some.
Director Antoine Fuqua gives the well-trod material more room to roam than necessary but fails to shade it in anything but the drabbest law enforcement blue.
While there is plenty going on here, however, the whole film smacks of déjà vu.
For all its powerful moments (of which there are many), it feels too calculated and pre-programmed in its downward spiral.
Violent, demeaning police drama too dark for most teens.
All roads in this cleverly-concealed, triangulated tale serendipitously lead to some godforsaken projects in Brownsville where live ammo is routinely employed as the ghetto equivalent of a calling card.
Not likely to go over too well with Mayor Bloomberg and his tourism bureau, is this tabloid cinema crooked cop thriller and ghetto housing project horror spree looking worse than an Afghan war zone on a bad day.
Not likely to go over too well with Mayor Bloomberg and his tourism bureau, is this tabloid cinema crooked cop thriller and ghetto housing project horror spree looking worse than an Afghan war zone on a bad day.
The drama doesn't just move between the three cops, it prowls between them, occasionally pouncing, and the film builds up quite a bit of tension.
It's played with considerable intensity -- by Hawke especially.
It is certainly the best film director Antoine Fuqua has made since he last traced the thin blue line with Oscar winner Training Day.
Fuqua has delivered his satirical masterpiece, a film that exposes every cop-movie cliché in the book by deploying every cop-movie cliché in the book, all the while -- and this is the genius part -- pretending that no-one has ever done this stuff before.
An ugly, fatuous, macho piece of self-regarding, self-pitying nonsense about New York cops.
Although slick and occasionally tense, it's also downright predictable and occasionally boring. In fact, top Gere it ain't.
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