Brooklyn's Finest

This was a good movie. A really good movie. But you can't help but leave the theater shaking your head and wondering why anyone would ever ever want to be a cop in New York City. Damn. Any images of glamor associated with law enforcement will be purged from your head after this film. And the movie is depressingly realistic. Realistic because it is depressing and depressing because it is real.

All the performances are incredible. Richard Gere seldom plays roles like this where his character seems to lack any self-respect at all. Wesley Snipes is back on his game and in full force. Don Cheadle is doing his thing and firing on all pistons as usual. Ethan Hawke...man. What a great performance. And he had my favorite line in the film (in the confessional w/ the priest talking about God's help.). Very powerful screenplay as well.

Antoine Fuqua (sp?) pimped slapped us in the face with his minimalist style on this. The camera work never calls attention to itself, he manages to make the hospital look claustrophobic and somewhere you'd just rather never be. I love that he showed us some images other directors would have shied away from (a whore cleaning herself off between Johns....) It just made the reality of the characters situations all the more believable.

And there were a few suprises in here too, Vincent D'Onofrio, who is always good. Will Patton doing solid work. And Ellen Barkin who can play a bitch so damn well.

The movie's tagline is "This is War. This is Brooklyn." Several times throughout the film, I remember thinking, "Damn...I'd rather be at war than a cop working this beat." This film is awesome but brutal.