"Brooklyn's Finest" Movie Review

"Brooklyn's Finest"
My 0-10 rating: 7
Genre: Crime, Drama
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Screenwriter: Michael C. Martin, Brad Caleb Kane
Starring: Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Jesse Williams, Ellen Barkin, Wesley Snipes, Lili Taylor, Will Patton, Vincent D'Onofrio
Time: 2 hrs., 13 min.
Rating: R (for bloody violence throughout, strong sexuality including graphic sex, nudity, drug content and pervasive vulgarity)

Gushing with bloody shootings, with enough of it to satiate even the most bloodthirsty violence aficionado for the next year, "Brooklyn's Finest" is immersed, almost drowned, in its gripping delivery.

This is by director Antoine Fuqua who did the similarly mega-powered photographic juggernaut, the 2001 "Training Day," a film which set a fairly unreachable standard of shadowy visual embellishment of everything falling within the reach of the camera.

Again, drugs are the basic generators of all the evil, and desperate humans are the drivers of a plot that amounts to little more than a wearisome cliche in itself but is buried under character close-ups of such scorching intensity that your attention is riveted mercilessly. Fuqua's method to his madness comes at you like a tsunami of human hostility, leaving your senses immobilized possibly for hours afterwards.

From the beginning, it's obvious that the crime and corruption-ridden East Brooklyn streets are cellars of sudden death where no man can make the same mistake once -- and a man's shadow might not be his own. Burning suspicions, catastrophically greedy motives, instant revenge and the erasing of individuals with chilling efficiency make the expression "lifestyle" irrelevant and deathstyle the only point.

Performances are uniformly outstanding with a virility of rare compulsion with each male and female player going at it as though this will be the ultimate judgment of his or her career.

Plot values are rather inconsequential. The sheer power of the portrayals of the violence are the focus of darkest artistry.

As the story makes clear immediately, things do seem rather like hell itself on East Brooklyn. Our key characters -- three cops -- are Eddie (Richard Gere) who is stumbling through his last seven days on the job, Tango (Don Cheadle) who's an undercover cop whose wife has left him over related issues, he now facing issues with his chief (Will Patton) and a hard-driving, snarling and snapping federal agent Smith (Ellen Barkin) who want him to set up his buddy Caz (Wesley Snipes) who's a drug dealer with Tango to be rewarded with a desk job, and narcotics cop Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), an undeserving father who's forever complaining that his house is too small for his family even as he loafs around in a huge basement entertainment room playing poker with his friends.

Those are your basics, all played as stereotypes you've seen in films back into time. Filling out personalities are interludes between Eddie and his hooker girlfriend (Shannon Kane). Tango's inner conflicts over the prospect of betraying his best buddy, and the fact of Sal's having five kids and a wife (Lili Taylor) who's pregnant with twins, he being given to attending the confession booth.

They're all headed for ugly stuff involving unmitigated police corruption and downbeat with inner and exterior conflicts for each bleakly scripted cop. Yet with all the film's power, its center on raw violence has an even tone which does not work to its advantage. In irony, the violence actually becomes monotonous at times.

Steel yourself for this. Then come and see what you think.

Marty Meltz, http://www.martymoviereviews.com, was the 30-year films critic for the Award-winning Maine Sunday Telegram until his column was budget-cut on Dec. 31, 2007.

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