'Brooklyn's Finest' a brooding mess of Hollywood hokum

Posted March 03, 2010 10:00 pm

Dann Gire

"These streets," an undercover cop named Tango tells an ex-con kingpin, "have an expiration date!"

What? Did he really say that?

The streets have an expiration date?

This might be a cute way for a screenwriter to suggest that thugs can't survive on the mean streets of New York forever, but seasoned big-city cops just don't talk like this.

Ever.

Although earnestly acted by a talented cast, "Brooklyn's Finest" packs enough Hollywood hokum to take the edge off its lethal bursts of violence and visceral street cred.

The crime drama is another one of those seriously bleak, pessimistic cop tales where the boys in blue surrender to corruption and give up fighting the good fight, either because it's much easier or they simply can't envision a better way to handle their lives as peace officers.

"Brooklyn's Finest" - a deliberately factitious title - follows three New York cops who apparently have no connection to each other.

Not at first. But as you might expect, their paths eventually cross in a series of unexpected, exceedingly violent encounters capped by one of the wimpiest, least satisfying finales in the genre's history.

One cop named Eddie (a cool Richard Gere) sets the tone of this movie by placing the barrel of his six-shooter in his mouth for a dry run at a suicide attempt. (See Mel Gibson's definitive version in "Lethal Weapon.")

He has only a few days to go before he retires, which would automatically be a death sentence for him in a regular formula cop thriller.

"Brooklyn's Finest" avoids that cliché, then employs the one where cop Eddie's girlfriend is a hot prostitute (Sharon Kane).

Hey, aren't they all?

Eddie has lost his will to be a cop, and intends to coast into retirement without lifting a trigger finger to help crime victims, or anyone else.

Across town, Tango (a pitch-perfect Don Cheadle) wrangles with his supervisor Bill (Will Patton in over-emoting mode) to be taken off the street before he goes bonkers from the stress.

Bill entices Tango to do one more deed that will cement his gold shield promotion: figure out a way to arrest a just-released convict named Caz (Wesley Snipes).

Because Caz once saved Tango's life, the cop feels just a bit conflicted about this.

Meanwhile, another undercover cop named Sal (Ethan Hawke) freely uses dope he collects on his busts while scheming to make a big score so he can afford a set of twins coming from his asthmatic wife (Chicago's Lili Taylor).

"Brooklyn's Finest" is directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose similarly themed 2001 police drama "Training Day" netted an Oscar for Denzel Washington as a corrupt cop, and an Oscar nomination for Hawke as his newbie sidekick.

By comparison, "Brooklyn's Finest" is a dark and brooding mess, a muddle of a movie that could have been about Eddie's redemption - but isn't - or about the inevitability of corruption that engulfs those cops who live out Eliot Ness' cry from "The Untouchables" - "I have become what I have beheld!"

The movie's original downer ending (yes, even more depressing than the one here) was dropped from the version shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Apparently, Fuqua didn't bother to film a new finale. He merely lopped off a few minutes at the end and went to market where his film will, like those New York streets, also have an expiration date.

"Brooklyn's Finest"

★½

Starring: Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Will Patton

Directed by: Antoine Fuqua

Other: An Overture Entertainment release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 133 minutes

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