Movie Review: The Equalizer 2

The Equalizer 2 *** / *****

Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.

Written by: Richard Wenk based on characters created by Richard Lindheim and Michael Sloan.

Starring: Denzel Washington (Robert McCall), Pedro Pascal (Dave York), Bill Pullman (Brian Plummer), Melissa Leo (Susan Plummer), Jonathan Scarfe (Resnick), Orson Bean (Sam Rubinstein),

Sakina Jaffrey (Fatima), Caroline Day (Amy), Ashton Sanders (Miles), Abigail Marlowe (Jana Calbert), Rhys Olivia Cote (Anna).

 

It probably should be possible that Denzel Washington has been a movie star since the 1980s, and yet had never made a sequel until The Equalizer 2. There is certainly enough generic action movies on his resume that you think at some point, someone would have dangled enough money in front of him to get him to come back. Sadly, there were two talked about sequels that never happened, that I would have loved to see – a follow-up to Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress (there is certainly more than enough Walter Mosley novels about Easy Rawlins to choose from) and a sequel to Spike Lee’s Inside Man – with Lee returning to direct – that also didn’t happen for some reason. So instead, the first sequel of Denzel’s career is a follow-up to the largely forgettable 2014 film The Equalizer. I was lukewarm on the first film when I saw it back in 2014, and was lukewarm on it again when I revisited it last week leading up to the release of the sequel. And to be honest, I’m lukewarm on the sequel as well – which never rises past of the level of entertaining time waster. Its biggest asset is Washington himself – who the more I think about it, the more I may well argue is the best actor in the world right now. Sure, not every film is a monster performance like Daniel Day-Lewis – but Day-Lewis works once every five years, and only for great directors. Washington can take practically any movie and make it something watchable and entertaining. You may well forget much of The Equalizer 2 by the time you reach your car, but while it plays, it works – and Washington is either incapable of phoning in a performance, or at least able to disguise it when he does.

 

If you forgot the first film, it starred Washington as Robert McCall, an ex-CIA operative with a special set of skills, hiding in plain sight working at Home Depot. When he decides to break his promise to his late wife – and use his skills again – it’s for a good cause – rescuing a young, Russian prostitute (Chloe Grace Mortez) from the violent thugs who smuggled her into the country, and are now pimping her out. When he takes down a room for Russian mobsters though – he ends up in bigger trouble, as more come out of the woodwork, accompanied by corrupt cops. McCall, of course, must kill them all.

 

In the new film, he’s got a new apartment and a new job – as a Lyft driver – but he’s more than willing to use his special set of skills to help people who need it – like a little girl kidnapped by her abusive father, or a young woman who fell victim to some Wall Street bro types. It actually takes a surprising amount of time for the actual main plot of The Equalizer 2 to kick in – as Robert’s only friend, Susan (Melissa Leo), another CIA operative, is sent to Belgium to investigate an apparent bloody murder/suicide of a CIA asset – and winds up dead herself. You don’t kill Robert McCall’s friends – as those responsible soon find out.

 

The film was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who has directed Washington several times now – most memorably in Training Day (2001), which won Washington his second Oscar. Most of their collaborations are more like this though – Fuqua directed the first film as well – B-action movies, the best of which is probably the very entertaining remake of The Magnificent Seven from a couple of years ago. Fuqua knows how to direct action, and he does it very well in this film – in particular, the climax set in a deserted small town, during a torrential downpour, which has some elements of an old school Western showdown anyway.

 

Washington knows what’s expected of him as well – and he does it. Whether he’s lecturing a young black kid from his neighborhood – trying to get to concentrate on his art, and not dealing drugs, or his very specific way of dealing with people who don’t know what they’re getting when they try and attack him, this isn’t a role that’s going to really tax Washington’s considerable abilities – but he’s still going to give it his all anyway.

 

So no, The Equalizer and now The Equalizer 2 are not going to be the films Washington is remembered for – they’re not pushing the likes of Malcolm X, Training Day or Fences off the mantel of the best Denzel performances ever. But there’s something to be said for an actor who take a mean, nasty little movie like The Equalizer and its sequel and make it work as well as it does. Washington is way better in this film than he needs to be – and that’s what’s makes the film worth seeing.

Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven

Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.

Written by: Richard Wenk & Nic Pizzolatto based on the screenplay by Akira Kurosawa & Shinobu Hashimoto & Hideo Oguni.

Starring: Denzel Washington (Chisolm), Chris Pratt (Josh Faraday), Ethan Hawke (Goodnight Robicheaux), Vincent D'Onofrio (Jack Horne), Byung-hun Lee (Billy Rocks), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Vasquez), Martin Sensmeier (Red Harvest), Haley Bennett (Emma Cullen), Peter Sarsgaard (Bartholomew Bogue), Luke Grimes (Teddy Q), Matt Bomer (Matthew Cullen), Jonathan Joss (Denali), Cam Gigandet (McCann), Emil Beheshti (Maxwell), Mark Ashworth (Preacher).

 

I don’t think one can argue that each version of The Magnificent Seven has gotten worse the one before it. Akira Kurosawa’s epic Seven Samurai (1954) is one of the greatest films ever made after all, and although John Sturges’ 1960 remake, moving the action from feudal Japan to the American West is nowhere near as good, it’s still a hell of an entertaining Western, and does honor at least part of Kurosawa’s masterpiece – as both films are about a dying way of life, whether it’s seven samurai or seven gunslingers, defending a town of humble farmers from people who want to steal their land, these men know their time is over, and it’s time to make way for a future that does not need them. You’re not particularly wrong to think that we really didn’t need Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven in 2016 – and yet I have to admit that I had a good time watching the film. Fuqua has always been skilled at directing action – and he gets to do more than his share of set pieces here – that thankfully do not involve shaky cameras and rapid fire editing. He has cast the film well, if rather predictably, with movie stars doing the type of roles that made them stars to begin with. The film doesn’t really try to do anything all that new here – although it is great to see a cast in a movie this size be this diverse, and perhaps in the age of Trump, the film may resonate a little more as it is, after all, but this ragtag group of mismatched gunslingers teaming up to take down a man who equates capitalism with God – but I think that’s rather by accident. I’m not going to argue that the film is original or vital or brilliant – but I will argue that it’s really, really entertaining – and for those of us who would love to see more Westerns on the big screen, a site for sore eyes.

 

The story is pretty straight forward – the evil robber baron Bart Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) wants the small town of Rose Creek to himself – there’s a mine, so there’s money – and he will do anything to get it. He offers to buy everyone’s land – for much less than its worth – and will kill anyone who refuses, as the opening scene aptly demonstrates. He’s giving the town three weeks to decide – by then he’ll be back from Sacramento, and expects to get what he wants. One widow, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) decides that she’s going to find some men to help the poor farmers defend their town. She meets Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) in a nearby town when he guns down quite a few men – legally of course. Once she has him on board, he brings the rest – drunken Faraday (Chris Pratt), sharpshooting Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), the Asian good with knives, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), the former Indian scalper Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), the Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and the Comanche Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeir). They storm the town, and send Bogue a message by taking care of his men. They know he’ll be there within a week – and bring an army with them. They need to prepare.

 

Fuqua has cast the movie well, if more than a little bit predictably. I love Denzel in this movie – riding into town like he’s John Wayne – the calm exterior of a killer with justice on his side, and vengeance on his mind. It’s a role that Denzel could do in his sleep – but he’s a movie star because he doesn’t – and if you cannot enjoy him in this mode, than I feel sorry for you. Pratt gets to be goofy funny – and he does that well. Hawke is fine, although perhaps I expected a little more from him, Korean star Byung-hun Lee continues to make an impression trying to break into Hollywood – yet still not finding a role as good as I Saw the Devil. The film doesn’t really give Garcia-Rulfo or Sensmeier much to do – with a cast this big, a few of them are going to fade into the background, and that’s their role. Best of all of the seven is Vincent D’Onofrio, who shows up in the film looking like Orson Welles’ Falstaff, but speaking with a weirdly pinched, slightly high-pitched voice. I have a feeling that D’Onofrio like to amuse himself in roles like this – that could easily be forgettable, by deciding to make his work as strange as possible. It works – here, at least. Sarsgaard is appropriately vile as Bogue – but a subdued vile, not a cackling one, and that helps.

 

This is not a movie for people who don’t want to see gunfights. The film opens with a massacre, moves onto a quick gunfight in a bar, and then the back half of the film is pretty much two big gunfights, with a little training montage in between. Fuqua has been doing gunfights his entire career – but rarely has been this good at them. The two extended one in the back part of the film in particular are expertly choreographed and exciting. Do they go on too long, with too many anonymous people being gunned down? Probably. Did I still have fun nearly every minute of them? Yes.

 

I’m not going to argue that the film is a masterwork by any means – you are better off watching either previous version other than this one. Yet, we just got out of a summer season in which what passed for action filmmaking was superheroes and flying CGI crap. Give me these seven, with their horses and six shooters any day over that.

Movie Review: Southpaw

Southpaw
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.
Written by: Kurt Sutter.
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Billy Hope), Rachel McAdams (Maureen Hope), Forest Whitaker (Tick Wills), Oona Laurence (Leila Hope), 50 Cent (Jordan Mains), Skylan Brooks (Hoppy), Naomie Harris (Angela Rivera), Victor Ortiz (Ramone), Beau Knapp (Jon Jon), Miguel Gomez (Miguel 'Magic' Escobar).

There is a certain comfort in watching a movie as clichéd as Southpaw. It is a boxing movie – a sport that has never been less popular in the world than it is right now, but remains the one that the most movies are made about. The film follows a familiar pattern – rich successful boxer loses everything, gets a new trainer – an old, grizzled vet – with a drinking problem, obviously – who runs a rundown gym, helping under privileged kids learn the art of boxing, so they can become better men – and finally, gets a shot at redemption, both inside and outside of the ring. They’ve basically been making this movie, with a few changes here and there, since the silent era – and for the most part, damn it, the formula still works. It helps, of course, when you have a fiercely committed lead – and Jake Gyllenhaal is certainly that in Southpaw, and when that older trainer is played by Forest Whitaker, who has made his fair share of bad movies over the years, but seems incapable of playing a false note, no matter how forced it may seem on the page. The pair don’t really overcome the clichés inherent in Southpaw, or make them seem new, but they do sell the hell out of them. Yeah, you’ve seen Southpaw before – and in better versions – but you’ve also seen it before in much, much worse versions as well.

Gyllenhaal stars as Billy Hope (yep, Hope is his last name) – who is the light heavyweight champion of the world. He grew up in the foster system – and so did his beloved wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams) – but now he’s super rich – the kind of rich where his manager can hand him a $30 million contract to sign, and Maureen doesn’t want him to do it. Billy’s a hothead – his style of boxing is basically to let the other guy knock him around for round after round, before he gets really pissed and beats the crap out of the guy. Maureen – correctly – thinks this may end up doing some long term damage to his head. She wants him to be there for their daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence). So, after another win in the ring, it appears like Billy may well end up retiring. Up – of course – there is a hothead challenger, Miguel “Magic” Escobar (Miguel Gomez) – who wants his shot, and runs his mouth off a little too much at a charity event. Things spiral out of control, and Maureen ends up dead (don’t complain about a spoiler that’s in the damn trailer). Things go from bad to worse quickly – a fight that goes awful, mounting lawsuits and debt, child services taking away Leila, etc. So Billy Hope has to get everything back all over again – and to do so, he needs Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker) – a grizzled trainer, who gave up training pro fighters. But for Billy, he’ll do it – but if, and only if, Billy will do exactly what Tick tells him to.
 

Southpaw works – as much as it does – because of Gyllenhaal and Whitaker – and to a lesser extent McAdams. She is fine in her role, but it’s a very small one – she dons a stereotypical New Yawk accent, and does it well, and clearly has some fun before she leaves. Whitaker brings his brand of humanism to the role – world weary and tired, but with some humor underneath – including one of the first times I have heard one of his characters discuss his eye. Tick is fundamentally a good person, and that comes through in every scene in the film. Gyllenhaal – who has been on a role as of late, with fine performances in films like Prisoners, Enemy and Nightcrawler – does more good work here. If he became wire thin like DeNiro in Taxi Driver for Nightcrawler, he bulks up like DeNiro in Raging Bull (in the boxing scenes, not the late scenes) here. You’d have to look hard to find a more clichéd role than the tough guy boxer trying to redeem himself, and showing his softer side underneath to his beloved kid – but Gyllenhaal still pulls it off. His redemption feels real, perhaps because he never does seem like that bad of a guy – just a not very smart one.

Everything that goes on around Gyllenhaal and Whitaker is perhaps even more a cliché than their characters are. The film was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who is quite good at action movie clichés, as well as drawing good performances from fine actors, and does that here as well. The scenes inside the right can be brutally violent, but that’s appropriate, and he captures the intensity as well. The rest of the cast is fine, but no one really leaves much of an impression – not even Naomie Harris, a very good actress, given not much to do as a social worker.

The film takes some narrative shortcuts throughout – many of which strain credibility if you examine them too closely. Hope’s fall is way too rapid for example, and no one much seems to care about arresting anyone for, you know, murdering McAdams. The uplifting ending is all well and good – but someone died here, so perhaps a boxing match cannot fix everything.

Still, Southpaw satisfies that itch for something that is just explosions or dumb comedy in the heat of summer, when every other movie at the multiplex is just that. It’s smart summer, counterprogramming, and fits the bill. Although, like many of those blockbusters, you may well forget about Southpaw when you hit the parking lot – as the film is running, it basically satisfies.

Movie Review: The Equalizer

The Equalizer
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.
Written by: Richard Wenk based on the television series by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim.
Starring: Denzel Washington (Robert McCall), Marton Csokas (Teddy), Chloë Grace Moretz (Teri), David Harbour (Masters), Haley Bennett (Mandy), Bill Pullman (Brian Plummer), Melissa Leo (Susan Plummer), David Meunier (Slavi), Johnny Skourtis (Ralphie), Alex Veadov (Tevi), Vladimir Kulich (Vladimir Pushkin).

Denzel Washington has essentially been on cruise control ever since he won his second Oscar for Training Day back in 2001 – and you could argue that even Training Day is little more than a decent genre film, with two great performances in it. For every time Washington has collaborated with a great director like Spike Lee in Inside Man or Ridley Scott on American Gangster or Robert Zemeckis on Flight, he seems to have four or five mindless action films.  There is a reason why – beyond simply that they make money – Washington is sought out by the directors of these films – and that is that Washington is capable of making even the ridiculous seem at least somewhat plausible. Take his latest, The Equalizer, where he reteams with his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua (who it must be said is competent director of movies like this, that kind of lucked into Training Day). In the film, Washington plays Robert McCall, a former CIA operative who can take out a room full of people in under 20 seconds, who has “retired” and is working at a Home Depot like store. He meets Teri (Chloe Grace Mortez) – who works as a prostitute for Russian gangsters – at an all-night diner, and when it becomes clears she’s being abused he snaps into action – killing a bunch of Russian gangsters. He finds he’s good at it, and decides he’ll help other people who need it – all the while, he’s being tracked by Teddy (Marton Csokas) – an even worse Russian gangster who wants to know what happened to his boss’ men. The whole movie is patently ridiculous from beginning to end – yet damn it all if Washington doesn’t sell it.

The film is stylishly directed by Fuqua – who has always been good at action sequences, and even if at times in The Equalizer he tries too hard to be Tony Scott (in the sequences where McCall visualizes what he’s about to do before he does it), he still knows how to stage an action sequences, and he does so with skill here. It may take a while for the movie to kick into high gear in terms of action, but it is worth the wait – even if the movie never quite tops its first action sequence.

The non-action sequence are anchored by Washington, who makes his character believable, even though there is nothing remotely believable if you stop to think about it at all. His early scenes with Mortez are very good – as the two bond and banter, and generally complement each other well – kind of like the unlikely pairing of Washington and Dakota Fanning in Man on Fire (one of the better Washington genre offerings post-Training Day).

The Equalizer has its share of problems. At over two hours, the film drags on too long – which is especially apparent since none of the action sequences are as good as the first, and the fact that movie misses Mortez when he character essentially vanishes in the second half. And, for the second week in a row, we have a movie where women are portrayed more as victims than as real human beings (last week’s was A Walk Among the Tombstones – which The Equalizer outdoes simply by having speaking roles for women, but cannot match for its stylish atmosphere). The film has a somewhat episodic structure – which I guess comes from the television show it is based on (which I had no idea of). The film kind of limps towards the finish line.

Overall though, The Equalizer is a decent example of the kind of ultra-violent, revenge fantasy film it wants to be. No, it’s not as ambitious as Washington at its best – it doesn’t even really attempt anything new, different, or all that interesting. And it’s the type of film you forget about by the time you reach the parking lot. But there are worse things a film can be.

Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen

Olympus Has Fallen
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua.
Written by: Creighton Rothenberger & Katrin Benedikt.
Starring: Gerard Butler (Mike Banning), Aaron Eckhart (President Benjamin Asher), Morgan Freeman (Speaker Trumbull), Rick Yune (Kang), Angela Bassett (Secret Service Director Lynn Jacobs), Melissa Leo (Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan), Finley Jacobsen (Connor), Dylan McDermott (Forbes), Radha Mitchell (Leah), Cole Hauser (Roma), Robert Forster (General Edward Clegg), Ashley Judd (Margaret Asher).

Olympus Has Fallen is a ridiculous action movie – of that, there can be little debate. In order to believe pretty much a second of the film, you have to suspend disbelief for two hours, and just sit back and enjoy the ride. If you are able to stop thinking, than you may well enjoy Olympus Has Fallen. It is well directed by Antoine Fuqua, who once again proves he is more than able to direct a good action movie. And it is well acted by the entire cast – even Gerard Butler, who typically I don’t like very much. I cannot really claim that Olympus Has Fallen is a good movie – it isn’t – but it’s not horrible either. If you want something completely undemanding, where you simply watch the bodies pile up, then you might enjoy Olympus Has Fallen – at least while you’re watching it. By the time you hit the parking lot, you’ll have either forgotten about the movie completely, or have too many questions about the logic of the movie to comprehend.

Mike Banning (Butler) is a Secret Service agent relegated to working at the Treasury after a car accident where he chooses to save President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) instead of the First Lady. He is the best the Secret Service has, and has a personal bond with the First family, but Asher doesn’t want to have to look at the man who let his wife die every day. Then, one day all hell breaks loose. Asher is supposed to meet with the South Korean Prime Minister at the White House. There is an “incursion” – meaning a plane in the no fly zone – and this one is spraying Washington with bullets. The security team takes the President, his staff and the South Korean Prime Minster and his staff to the “bunker”. But wouldn’t you know it, the Prime Minister’s staff is not who they say they are. They are terrorists, with murky motivations about allowing “Korea to settle the Civil War your country interfered with”. The terrorists now have control of the President, all his top aides, and the War Room. Oh, and in a brutally violent and bloody gun battle that takes up a good 15 minutes of screen time, they also have complete control of the White House above ground as well. Banning fights his way into the White House, and is the only one on the inside. He is in communication with another War Room, trying to find a way to take back the White House and the President. The Speaker of the House Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) is in charge, because both the President and the Vice President are being held hostage in that bunker (you would think since they cannot fly on the same plane together, they would have separate places to go in such a case, but that’s the least of the film’s logic loopholes). And Banning is also taking down the terrorists – one at a time. If you think this sounds an awful lot like Die Hard in the White House – well, you’re right.

You could drive a fleet of Mack trucks through all the plot holes in the movie, which simply adds more and more issues of credibility as it goes along – especially when it starts involving something called the “Cerberus” codes, which have to be fictional, because if they’re not, than it’s the stupidest idea involving nuclear weapons since the Soviet’s secret doomsday device in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove – that movie at least acknowledged the idea was stupid. Besides, the Codes are just an excuse to have another of those giant countdown clocks action movies love so much that shows in glowing red numbers just how much time before nuclear annihilation we all have, so the hero can stop it just before time runs out and a room full of people can cheer and high five each other, while Morgan Freeman breathes a huge sigh of relief.

Looking back at what I’ve written so far, I realize it sounds like I hated Olympus Has Fallen. I didn’t. I didn’t really like the movie either – it’s too preposterous for that, and had me rolling my eyes at each new plot twist and at the “America, Fuck Yeah!” attitude of action movies so brilliantly satirized by Team America: World Police. And for those who thought that Zero Dark Thirty endorsed torture (you’re still wrong on that one, by the way), wait until you see a scene when Butler has two terrorists tied up and needs information from them. I would expect a lot of op-eds comparing Antoine Fuqua to Leni Riefenstahl and a Senate Investigation like that movie received, except that the movie will be seen as too goofy for that. You do not make headlines and get the media attention you they crave so much by picking on a movie like Olympus Has Fallen.

What I will say about the film is that it is very well made by Fuqua. He may not be John Woo in terms of staging gun battles, but the siege on the White House is one of the best scenes of its kind in recent memory. And it’s bloody as hell as well – which you can either say is a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it - typically, I like when action movies of this sort show the blood – it’s not quite as easy to see this thing as purely escapist fun when you see all the blood, and realize that when these people die, they die hard, instead of just a bloodless pirouette and then falling to the floor. Fuqua knows how to direct action – and he does so well here. The cast is mostly very good as well. Yes, Morgan Freeman can sleepwalk through this kind of role by this point, but he does what is required of him. The same can be said of Aaron Eckhart, who makes a convincing President – even if you have no idea what his actual politics are – or even if he’s a Democrat or a Republican (there are some talk about billionaire donors, but that could be either party). Butler is more convincing as an action hero than a romantic comedy leading man, and plays Banning – the superhero – as well as it can be played. The weak link is probably Oscar winner Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense, but given the absolutely ludicrous dialogue she has to work with (much more so than anyone else), I’ll give her a pass on this one.

Olympus Has Fallen is in no way a good movie. It is mindless, violent entertainment for action movie aficionados only. You know the type – they just want to see things blow up real good and lots of gun battles and hand to hand combat. If you don’t expect much from Olympus Has Fallen, you may have a good time with it. In just a few months, we’ll get see Roland Emmerich’s take on pretty much this exact same plot – with Channing Tatum springing into action to save President Jamie Foxx from a heavily armed paramilitary group in White House Down. Given Emmerich’s track record (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Anonymous) I have a feeling it will be just as preposterous as this film.

Movie Review: Brooklyn's Finesy

Brooklyn’s Finest ***
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Written By: Michael C. Martin.
Starring: Richard Gere (Eddie), Don Cheadle (Tango), Ethan Hawke (Sal), Wesley Snipes (Caz), Brian F. O'Byrne (Ronny Rosario), Will Patton (Lt. Bill Hobarts), Michael K. Williams (Red), Lili Taylor (Angela), Shannon Kane (Chantel), Ellen Barkin (Agent Smith), Vincent D'Onofrio (Carlo).

Brooklyn’s Finest is a kind of throwback to the crime films I remember from the late 1980s and early 1990s before Quentin Tarantino came in an forever changed the genre with Pulp Fiction. I’m thinking of films like Q&A, New Jack City, Carlito’s Way and Sugar Hill. Films with large casts that spin a web of crime and corruption around their characters but play it completely straight. On that level, I enjoyed the film. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Brooklyn’s Finest may not be a great crime film, but it is an entertaining one, right up to the cheesy freeze frame that ends the movie – something I don’t think I’ve seen in more than a decade (and, it must be said, with good reason).

The movie essentially follows three different cops in Brooklyn over the course of one week. Eddie (Richard Gere) has one week left on the job before retirement. He has not had a great career as a cop – which is why after 22 years on the job, he is still in uniform. He has a drinking problem, his wife has left him, and he spends his free time with a prostitute (Shannon Kane). He is assigned a young cop on his first shift to show the ropes to. But Eddie stopped caring years ago, and his cynicism annoys his new partner. Sal (Ethan Hawke) is a good Catholic – meaning essentially that he already has 5 kids, and his wife Angela (Lili Taylor) is pregnant with twins. Their old, run down house is getting too small, and besides it is filled with mold which is wrecking havoc on Angela’s asthma. He is part of a drug task force, who does raids on dealers, and Sal has crossed the line from simply arresting them, to killing them and taking their money. He has a week to get the money for a down payment on his new house together, and needs a big score soon. Finally, there is Tango (Don Cheadle), who has been working undercover in a major drug ring for a few years now. He is tired, and is losing the life he knew before the undercover work, and is starting to cross the line – as he relates more to the criminals than to the cops. He wants out. They tell he can get out, after one last operation. They want to arrest Caz (Wesley Snipes), who has just got out of jail on a technicality, and has gone back to running his drug business. But Tango is unsure – Caz once saved his life, and he doesn’t want to be the one who sends him back to jail – this time probably for the rest of his life.

Fuqua and his writer, Michael C. Martin, do a wonderful job of weaving these three separate story threads together. The best thing I can say about the movie is that all three stories are equally interesting – there is not a weak link, as is often the case with movies like this, where we long to get back to one story over the others. They are aided greatly by the performances. Cheadle delivers one of his strongest performances as Tango, the cop who no longer knows what side he is on. Throughout the movie, he hangs on by a thread, and threatens to go over the edge at any given minute. Snipes has not been this good in years – perhaps as far back as the aforementioned New Jack City. He is actually acting here, and it’s great to have him back. I think Hawke may be a little miscast as Sal, but he brings a gritty intensity to the role nonetheless. Gere is usually the blandest of actor – someone who seems to fade into his surroundings. But he is strong here as a man who simply wants to move on with the rest of his life. His story stands at a stark contrast to the other two – as Tango and Sal are losing their moral center, Eddie is just finding his. They are aided by excellent supporting work by Brian F. O’Bryne, Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael K. Williams along with Taylor and Kane. Will Patton doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing in this movie however – something that would stick out more if most of his scenes were not opposite Ellen Barkin who is truly god awful in the film.

Brooklyn’s Finest doesn’t really do anything new with the genre. It is heavily reliant on clichés, and if like me, you lived on these types of crime films for years, you are likely to see every plot twist and turn coming a mile off. But there is something to be said for making a solid example of your chosen genre as well, and that is what Brooklyn’s Finest does. It may not be a masterpiece, but for people like me who are fans of the genre – and want to hear the word “motherfucker” spouted roughly 100 times in under two hours, then Brooklyn’s Finest gets the job done.