BROOKLYN’S FINEST

Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) has taken on the direction of a screenplay by newcomer and New York City subway worker, Michael C. Martin, about three Brooklyn cops and their intersecting journeys through and around a particularly  dangerous and drug laden Brooklyn housing project.

First, we meet Sal (Ethan Hawke), quickly learning that he’s living a double life:  dirty cop and loving Catholic father of 5.  The family is squeezed into a small and mold ridden house which is endangering the life of Sal’s asthmatic wife Angela (Lili Taylor) and the twins she’s carrying.   Tango (Don Cheadle) is a detective who has been working in deep cover for a drug gang whose boss Caz (Wesley Snipes) is just being released from prison  Tango is on the edge, wanting out, when he’s pushed by a Agent Smith (Ellen Barkin) to do one last thing to secure his desk job.  Finally, Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere) is one week from retirement when he’s saddled with two rookies, in an ill conceived training plan.  Dugan,  separated from his wife, finds solace in the company of a young prostitute, Chantel (Shannon Kane), as well as a bottle of scotch and a handgun he’s loaded with one bullet.

It’s three barely overlapping stories that do come together in an unpredictable way.  And in the sense that you are thrust into the immediacy of these characters desperation, there is an atmosphere of doom and dread.  One knows, although one hopes it is not true, that not all of these likable, relatable characters will survive the picture.  And although it is violently gripping, it is primarily a character piece: each and every actor is there to create drama with a nuanced insight into their motivations and actions.

I’m not sure I loved this film perhaps because the set up for all this dragged on a bit, but I liked it quiet a lot.  It’s no easy feat to run three stories, with three strong character in one narrative.  But it is critical that we understand who they are and that it makes sense.  The weakest link here is Hawke’s character, Sal, clearly someone who has a life history of making one disastrous choice after another which has lead him to the dilemma we find him in.  But there has to be something besides providing for his kids that would motivate him to take such risks, perhaps there is some daredevil thrill which inspires many people to become cops in the first place.  But I was left wondering, what was really pushing Sal, maybe that same something that drives people to climb Mt Everest without oxygen.

Don Cheadle is always excellent and I would say whereas we could have used a little more insight into Sal, the moments when Tango gazes sentimentally at pictures of his estranged wife were not necessary.  The pure tension as he runs between his police handlers  Lieutenant Hobarts (Will Patton) and Agent Smith (Barkin) and his gang compatriots is, frankly, nerve wracking:  “pull him out” we cry, knowing that it’s almost probably too late.  There is something very tight about Cheadle that made it extremely difficult to believe he was even thinking about his lost romance.

When I first looked at Richard Gere, being goaded by some disrespectful younger cops, I wasn’t at all sure I’d buy him as a burnt out retiree.  He just looks so good, the polar opposite of a faded star like Mel Gibson with the years of alcohol abuse written across his once beautiful face.  One can imagine, on first encounter with Gibson, we would have recognized that spent cop right away.  But Fuqua wanted the contrast between someone who seems together but isn’t and Gere, underrated these many years, delivered.  Despite his still, slightly pretty look he’s no lightweight which he proves here, in one of his best performances, as we watch him unravelling, day by day.  When he turns in his gun and his badge to some nameless civil servant in an empty, dingy room, he asks “is that it?”  Here is someone who has been coasting for years, yet clearly has no real plan or identity beyond this moment.

It’s got some flaws as a film, but it is well directed on real Brooklyn, drug infested locations, with stellar performances from each and every member of the cast including pretty boy, Grey’s Anatomy actor Jesse Williams, who provides Gere with an opportunity for an “I used to be you.”  Fuqua’s extraordinary talent has been proven.  Writer Michael C. Martin was unbelievably lucky to have had his very first screenplay project come together in this way.

Brooklyn’s Finest opens March 5th, 2010

Directed by Antoine Fuqua; written by Michael C. Martin; produced by Basil Iwanyk, John Langley, Elie Cohn, John Thompson and Avi Lerner; Director of Photography, Patrick Murguia; edited by Barbara Tulliver; and music by Marcelo Zarvos.  Released by Overture Films.   

With: Richard Gere (Eddie Dugan); Don Cheadle (Clarence “Tango” Butler); Ethan Hawke (Sal Procida); Caz (Wesley Snipes); Ellen Barkin (Agent Smith); Lili Taylor (Angela); Chantel (Shannon Kane); and Will Patton (Lieutenant Hobarts.)