Wait. Wesley's back? And in a big budget crime movie? How could that not be good, right? I mean, I've been waiting since Blade 2 which has been, what ten years. This whole week, I've been contemplating what I'd program in a Snipes double-feature. I've come up with Demolition Man and White Men Can't Jump. Then I see the commercials for Brooklyn's Finest and not only is he in it, he does some street banter with Don Cheadle! There's a scene where Wesley's Caz looks out over New York and talks about how nice it is to be free from jail, how it's nice to be back. Yeah, this might be a good start for Wes, too, to be back in a pretty comfy role, something to relax in before fully grinding and settling in for something hard. But, I mean, I've seen this glad-to-be-back scene in tons of movies and TV shows, and those other times were better than this. That's basically the movie in a nutshell: a soft attempt at a hard movie.
Brooklyn's Finest has 3 storylines. You have the aforementioned Don Cheadle as undercover cop Tango who's been in the shit too long. The lines are blurring and he's not sure if he can setup Caz since they've become boys. Then there's Sal, am Italian cop with a St. Michael the Archangel tattoo covering his back. He needs extra cash to support his growing family. Will he steal some drug cash to finance his new dream home? Lastly, there's Eddie, a foot patrol who's 7 days from retirement, requisite X-filled calendar on the inside of his locker door. Seven days might be too long, though, as he starts off every morning by putting an empty gun in his mouth. Practice.
The main beef I have with this movie has to do with the writing. As good as the actors are, they all had to push extra hard, teeth gritted, through some bad lines. I mean, Cheadle, as good as he is, can only be so good when he has lines like this one that refers to his mental state, "I'm fucked up in the game." Or Hawke, explaining to the priest that he doesn't want God's forgiveness: "I want his help."
The writing quality flows over to the plot, too. And since there are three plots, there's sort of three times the crappiness. They're all uncompelling rehashes of crime movie stock stories. The Cheadle strand is a bit confusing as none of the intricacies of the biz, not the drug players nor the gang hierarchy, are really explored with any depth. We don't get a sense of how Caz and Tango move drugs or who they compete against or who they sell to. It's as if, by casting three actors from The Wire, that we're supposed to just accept that these characters are hard men, working a hard industry. The Hawke story is oddly plotted as well. In the first scene, he sits in a car with a drug dealer (Vincent D'Onofrio giving us a good, solid ten minutes) and kills him for his cash. The rest of the film concerns Hawke's agonizing over committing other crimes to get some more funds. Wouldn't a guy who's already killed be a bit more ok about lifting some drug cash? He's not though and, for some reason, he keeps on with the agonizing. Dude, you've already done the harder work, what's the trouble with the lesser crime?
Most clumsy is the way the film tries to link these subplots (necessary for the genre, post-Pulp Fiction). It tries, first, to do it thematically, all the main characters struggling regarding the line between right and wrong (Gere with his hookers and drugs, Cheadle with his cop/dealer personas, Hawke with his stealing). You can see how that wouldn't work if they aren't compelling (covered above). There's also the way the movie jams the characters together as they pass on the street or exchange words in the police station. One good thing done nicely is how the director Antoine Fuqua conflates stories in a simultaneous couple minutes of high tension. Mid-movie, Snipes contemplates killing a supposed-snitch, Gere's rookie partner loses control of an altercation, and Hawke fights the temptation to steal some cash. They're all cut together to crescendo, some bullets fired some not. Unfortunately, Fuqua does it twice, and it sort of becomes transparent the second time at the very end of the film. Fuqua has some chops. There are some good long, follow-behind takes à la Goodfellas, but he milks and over-repeats that, too. There's one in a club, in a strip joint, in a diner…
Oh, and there's not enough Wesley, screen time wise but more importantly, swag wise. He's still looking juiced, like he could front kick guys through windows or dunk on Woody Harrelson. But he's a shell of a Wesley character, not mean at all. Just a pussycat who does no one any harm or even really give off any menace. No edge. You know how this movie is named after a hard Jay-Z song off Reasonable Doubt, the song that guest stars B.I.G.? Well, the trailer has that soft ass track with Rhianna.
Big disappointment. With this caliber of actors you should be able to pull off a better movie. This feels like it was written to go straight-to-dvd.
i like the ethan hawke god/help line.