Brooklyn's Finest

Brooklyn’s Finest looks like it wants be the ultimate modern day cop movie: Its three stories capture three angles of how duty is handled in the NYPD. In each, director Antoine Fuqua has his subjects struggle between morality and survival. Missing the operatic rhythms of Michael Mann’s Heat, Fuqua delivers something closer to the law and order version of 21 Grams. It’s TV drama sensationalism, at its best in a thread about policeman Sal (Ethan Hawke) turning to theft to provide for his family. Hawke’s transformation ignites the storytelling in a way that the shifted loyalty between old friends Tango and Caz (Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes) leaves unrealized. Most stagnant is the focus on jaded close-to-retirement Eddie (Richard Gere). The lack of revelations in Brooklyn’s Finest make it epic in posture only. –Mark Palermo