Brooklyn's Finest
Release Date:
March 5, 2010
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 48/123 |
David Mumpower |
Several intersecting arcs blend seamlessly in a very well acted drama. |
| 157/190 |
Max Braden |
I like cop dramas but this is longer and less focussed than it could have been. |
Director Antoine Fuqua seems to have a passion for movies with guns. Sure, he departed briefly from the norm with King Arthur (swords!) but Training Day, Tears of the Sun on Shooter all have a similarity in that they're action flicks involving cops, soldiers, marksmen and the like. Fuqua continues this trend with his latest film, Brooklyn's Finest.
The film, which reunites Fuqua with Training Day star Ethan Hawke, follows three New York City narcotics officers over the course of one week. Richard Gere portrays a veteran who is only days from retirement and leisure time spent at his fishing cabin in Connecticut. Hawke is a cop who will cross any number of lines to provide for his wife and seven (!) kids. The third officer is played by Don Cheadle, a guy who's been undercover so long that his loyalties are starting to become questionable.
All three men are brought together through intersecting plotlines, with New York's Operation Clean-Up targeting the BK housing project. Our protagonists struggle with corruption in their own department as well as the danger of dealing with some particularly rough drug dealers.
Brooklyn's Finest comes from Overture Films, which is the distributor behind such movies as The Crazies, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Law Abiding Citizen, Pandorum, Traitor and Righteous Kill. Their films are generally pretty middling performers at the box office, but by the same token the budgets are typically small in scale. Brooklyn's Finest is no exception, as its budget numbers come in at $25 million. This means that even small-scale success will be a win for the studio. Their marketing power isn't quite up to par with that of the big players, but at the very least, they should be able to parlay this film's release into a money maker once home video revenues are counted in the tally. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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