The Good

A solid attempt to make a traditional, new school, New York film in the vein of masters like Sidney Lumet.

The Bad

This film is so myopic it is really hard to to care what happens to any of the characters.Brooklyn's Finest sees Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke and Wesley Snipes paired up inside the BK housing project. In this film, Hawke plays a police officer who wants to do the right thing by the force, but he needs more money to take care of his family. So, he's a dirty cop with a heart of gold. Don Cheadle plays an undercover officer who is tight with Wesley Snipes' just sprung from jail character. Cheadle wants out of the undercover racket. He wants to ride a desk and have a simpler life as a detective. He can't achieve this until he sells out Snipes' character but this is something he is conflicted about doing. Richard Gere... well, I don't really know what Gere's problem is. He has seven days left to go on the force but it seems like he is on the outs with a lot of his co-workers (this isn't ever really explained).

What ensues between all of these people is a myriad of drug deals, backdoor deals, and other deals that seem like perhaps they were written with a lot more grit until Hollywood came in and slicked them up. In the end, everybody pretty much gets what they deserve but so much of this movie feels forced that it's really hard to care about any of these people. Maybe that isn't even the problem, maybe the big problem is that following this labyrinthine film is so difficult at times, and so much of it seems like actors acting... that one can see the ending denouement a mile away.

Features

Featurettes

The featurettes that come with this DVD are:

Chaos & Conflict

Boyz N The Real Hood

An Eye For Detail

From MTA to WGA

The two featurettes that most stuck out to me were the Boyz N The Real Hood and the From MTA to WGA pieces. The first one looks at the co-stars of this film and how they were from the real projects where Brooklyn's Finest filmed. It was interesting, mainly because we get to see a group of people who usually don't have camera's put on them in this way. From MTA to WGA was quite nice to see as the person who wrote this movie, Michael C. Martin, used to work for the MTA in New York. Once he sold the script, a week before this movie started shooting, he quit his job and has been living the dream of a Hollywood screenwriter ever since.

Commentary Track

Deleted Scenes

Considering that this movie is 132 minutes I didn't really feel the need to spend a ton of time with the deleted scenes. Lets be honest, Antoine Fuqua is a pretty revered director. He can get films made just by attaching his name to them. So, when one realizes that this movie is over two hours, they will most likely assume (like I am) that the director had final cut. These extra scenes aren't really necessary.

Video

Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation - 2.40:1. Brooklyn's Finest looked pretty darn good in standard DVD. As you can guess the camera moves quite fluidly throughout this film. While a lot of the scenes seem to be overcast, there are a lot of them that were lensed in dark rooms. I didn't notice any pixilation or any moments where the image seemed to be baked in any way. This film cuts quick in spots but for the most part it is content to let the action unfold in a way that one can follow, provided they can follow the plot of this film.

Audio

Dolby Digital 5.1. English and Spanish subtitles. There were a few instances in which I had to turn the subtitles on mainly because I couldn't figure out what the characters were saying. I am not talking about street idioms and that sort of thing. I am talking about having to subtitle my player so I could understand Richard Gere. However, moments like that didn't take place very often. For the most part the sound was solid without having to be too overt and I think it did get us inside a lot of the character's heads.

Package

Gere, Snipes, Hawke and Cheadle are front and center on this black, white and red front cover. The title of the film is embossed on the cover as well. The back gives us four more shots of the cast taken from the film, a description of that this movie is about, a Special Features listing, a cast list and technical specs.

Final Word

Brooklyn's Finest is certainly worth a watch but I don't know that it should get anything more than that. Like Righteous Kill before it, we quickly learned that that was no Heat. That made sense considering that Michael Mann was nowhere near that third screen pairing of DeNiro and Pacino.

Brooklyn's Finest was helmed by Antoine Fuqua who was also the man behind Training Day. As you can guess... this movie, while focusing on dirty cops, isn't Training Day.