Brooklyn's Finest

The cop drama is a timeless genre of American cinema and there's no more classic setting for one than the crime-infested underbelly of New York City. Brooklyn's Finest drops an impressive ensemble into a world of felony and desperation. Unfortunately, it doesn't deliver anything that a thousand criminal thrillers already haven't.

Officer Dugan (Richard Gere) wakes up to the first scene of the film the way any Brooklyn cop seven days away from retirement does: with a scowl and a shot of whiskey. Dugan, disillusioned with the 22 years of rape and violence he has witnessed on the streets, wants simply to make it through his last week and doesn't even attempt to mask his apathy for his work. Meanwhile, Tango (Don Cheadle) struggles to maintain his cover in a circle of relentless gangsters working for Brooklyn's most dangerous crime lord. Just blocks away, Sal (Ethan Hawke) labors tirelessly to provide a living for his impoverished family and finds himself forced to make some morally questionable decisions along the way.

All of this sounds complicated but, in execution, really isn't. Excepting some trivial moments in which main characters brush past each other at crowded crosswalks, these three stories don't interlock in any way whatsoever. At the end of the day, the movie tells three independent short stories overlaid on one another. The effect is interesting. Because the stories are told in alternating cuts the film never seems to slow down. If the action starts to drag in one subplot, it usually coincides with rising action in another. In fact, the only time the pace changes is during the simultaneous three-way climax near the movie's end.

Each analogous plot holds an essentially good man in a desperate situation, and the juxtaposition of the different ways each character handles their desperation really makes this film. The only problem is that none of the subplots are different enough from any story we've heard before, and the fact that the time is divided three ways prevents the film from really fleshing out any of them.

Brooklyn's Finest is something like what would happen if the writers of Crash and The Departed got together in New York with a slightly lesser famed all-star cast and less talented direction. And unlike either of those films, this one eventually ends but doesn't necessarily resolve. Characters meet the ends we would expect of them, but while they're realistic, they aren't necessarily the endings that will enrapture an audience.

Overall the cast gave absolutely brilliant performances. If Hawke was ever meant for a role it was this one. He's engaging, respectable, and convincingly troubled, and while the audience must question his ethically skewed actions, they also understand them. Wesley Snipes, likewise, hits the ground running with an amazing return to the big screen following a six-year hiatus after his vampire-slaying flop, Blade: Trinity. Snipes's role in this film, even if overshadowed by his costars, could pave the way to some more respectable gigs.

Even with the fast pace and some powerful acting jobs, there isn't enough to make Brooklyn's Finest a must-see. It's good, but not great—an unmemorable speed bump on the long and winding road of the cop drama.