Henry Saw: Brooklyn's Finest

Better than some recent cop dramas...but still not very good



Outside of The Departed it is hard to think of a lot of good cop movies from the five years. Street Kings? Righteous Kill? Pride and Glory? Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans? All varying levels of bad. Brooklyn's Finest is better than all those films but still not as good as it could have been.

Brooklyn's Finest is directed by Antoine Fuqua and follows three different officers in the Brooklyn Police Department. Ethan Hawke plays a cop with a large family who is struggling to earn enough money to buy a new house. Don Cheadle in an undercover officer who has formed an overly strong bond with the criminal he is supposed to bring down (played by Wesley Snipes). Richard Gere is an alcoholic cop with one week left before his full pension kicks in. The movie weaves their different stories until they all (sort of) intersect in the last 20 minutes.



Don Cheadle's sections of the film are by far the best. Not only is he the best actor in the movie, but Wesley Snipes makes a nice little comeback in a key role, and their relationship really worked. Ethan Hawke's part of the film is filled with cinematic cliches but is at least is anchored by a solid performance from Hawke and Brian F. O'Byrne who plays Hawke's partner.

The Richard Gere storyline is painful to sit through and has the most illogical conclusion. It is by far the most stale and trite thread in the film and Gere sleepwalks through his role.

Fuqua, best known for directing Training Day, shows very little ingenuity in filming this familiar set of cop dramas. There are too many heavy-handed and obvious moments in his direction. The movie seems to think its showing us something new, or something important, when it is all things we've seen in almost every police film since the 1930s.



An utterly missable film. Brooklyn's Finest is still better than those movies I listed above...which is kind of incredible...but it is not worth the 2+ hours its takes to watch it.

Grade: C

Best Scene: A moment between Wesley Snipes, Don Cheadle, and Michael K. Williams on a rooftop...