Spend seven days with a few of Brooklyn's Finest

Brooklyn's Finest Movie Review

One of my favorite all time HBO series is “The Wire”. God I miss it….

Brooklyn’s Finest reminded me of that series. Very intense. Very emotional. And you wanted more of it.

The audience is partnered up with three of Brooklyn’s finest as they go thru a week of work. But it’s not a week of DUI arrests and trailer park domestics as in the reality show Cops.

It is seven days in Brooklyn’s 65th precinct and its drug problems. Three different cops in three different positions. Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), Sal Procipa (Ethan Hawke) and Clarence “Tango” Butler (Don Cheadle) do an outstanding job of portraying these cops.
We are along with them for some hourly tests of judgement on and off the job.

Dugan is a week away from retirement and burned out. Gere plays this short timer very well and you are not sure whether you are going be able to empathize with him as the movie moves along.

Sal is struggling with the responsibilities and pressures of trying to raise a family. Pregnant wife,(Lily Taylor) and a several more kids live in a house they are about to bust out of. Ethan Hawke always does a superb job of playing a guy strung out. The audience will have no problem empathizing with him as he struggles to make ends meet on a cop’s paycheck.

When“Tango”Butler first appears in the movie, you are not sure which side he is on. The good guys or the bad guys. And that is clearly his problem in the movie. Don Cheadle is excellent as he portrays a man who has been undercover too long. He not only wants to get out, he needs to. The lines are blurring.

There are many promising scenes and appearances in the movie. Ellen Barkin is FBI Agent Smith. Tough but not messy. Wesley Snipes is Caz, who has some history with Tango. And Michael Kenneth Williams is Red. (he played Omar in The Wire). Great performances, especially Barkin.

Director Antoine Fuqua gives you seven intense days with Brooklyn’s Finest. He is accomplishes it without over the top scenes. He really nails the idea that the stress that police work provides bleeds everywhere in a cops life. It changes them from the idealist rookie cop they were on day one, to the apathetic cop they have become one week short of retirement. Fuqua also provides the in between job/life struggles of a cop on the job for ahwile. And he manages to do it well in just over 2 hours. You get sucked into their lives during this film. You will spend a lot of time thinking about this movie and talking about it afterwards. And that’s a good thing. Isn’t that why you go to see a film in the first place?