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Brooklyn's Finest

Brooklyn's Finest (2010)

March. 04,2010
|
6.7
|
R
| Drama Thriller Crime

Enforcing the law within the notoriously rough Brownsville section of the city and especially within the Van Dyke housing projects is the NYPD's sixty-fifth precinct. Three police officers struggle with the sometimes fine line between right and wrong.

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Reviews

Gurlyndrobb
2010/03/04

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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Calum Hutton
2010/03/05

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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Raymond Sierra
2010/03/06

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

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Jenni Devyn
2010/03/07

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

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cinemajesty
2010/03/08

Movie Review: "Brooklyn's Finest" (2009)Produced and directed with the best intentions by director Antoine Fuqua to create a masterful hyper-realistic crime-thriller including three strong leading men Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle and Richard Gere and a special appearance by Wesley Snipes as prison-released character of Caz; nevertheless this movie premiering on January 16th 2009 at Sundance Film Festival and then parked for another year in some non-realized distribution deal-in-the-making ambience with picture-neglecting deep-industry-connected producers John Thompson and Basil Iwanyk, who hardly convinced director Antoine Fuqua to deliver empathetic meaning within a overly-structured storyline of three cops in the service for more or less in favors for the New York Police Force, when stark realities hit in feminine-state-of-existence-denying scenes of violence with gun, fist and up talking mouths that this well-crafted but utterly cold crime-thriller in its unbalanced 125-Minute-Editorial by cutter Barbara Tulliver vanishes from the spectre's mind as soon as curtains roll.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

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Finfrosk86
2010/03/09

I got inspired to talk like a gangster while I watched this, as it has quite a lot of gangster lingo.Nawmsayin'? You know, I found this movie right here to be like, you know, it's like entertaining and sh*t, but it's nothing special nawmsayin'?It prolly won't get stuck up in yo' head like a hot slug, seemsayin? But it's aait, B. It's aait.OK, seriously. This movie is pretty entertaining. The acting is good, it's nicely paced. The action is solid. I like the sound design. Good, crisp, shooting sounds and what not.I do got some beef with the plot, though. I appreciate what they're trying to do here, but it's just a little too much. Some of the stuff that happens make you think like, damn, those are some major ass coincidences! It's just not believable. And that's not something I'm usually bothered by, but since this is supposed to be realistic and grimy, it kind of pulls you out a little. Now, it is cool to see each main characters "story", and it is rather engaging, but the story as a whole is just a little hard to swallow. There are also some, how to put it, inconsistencies with some of the characters. Not that much, but enough for me to notice. Anyway, you can do a lot worse than this, but there are better alternatives out there too. At the moment I got a thing for these kinds of movies, cops, gangsters, corruption, the works, and I think "Street Kings" is a way better movie. Although not totally the same. "Training Day" is also an obvious pick. And I like "Sabotage" too.

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Prismark10
2010/03/10

Brooklyn's Finest is an urban morality tale where director Antoine Fuqua visits themes he dealt in Training Day and here includes Ethan Hawke now playing a veteran cop with money troubles, a large family, crummy house and tempted to steal drugs money to makes ends meet.Richard Gere is a cop on the verge of retirement playing it safe much to the annoyance of a new partner he has to babysit and it looks even his colleagues have little respect for him. Gere's only comfort is a close relationship with a prostitute.Don Cheadle is a cop in deep cover, maybe undercover for too long, he wants out, a promotion but he trusts his superiors less than he does the gangsters he is mingling with.Like the film Crash, the lives of these three cops and their storyline collide and it may not lead to a happy ending.The story is not original and difficult to do with a fresh twist so relies on its performances. All three leads with a supporting cast that includes Wesley Snipes and Ellen Barkin do well, even the minor roles are effective.I guess Gere is probably too old to play even a cop on the verge of retirement but he seems to be the heart of the film, someone who burnt out years ago but wants to find long term happiness when he retires and makes one last attempt in being a cop and take a risk.

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johnnyboyz
2010/03/11

Brooklyn's Finest tells three respective tales of a trio of very different people more broadly connected to the police force of New York City; three people who each alike want 'out' of their respective lives and lifestyles within the force, three people who live and operate in very different capacities therein the force, but look forward to the new ventures and pastures to follow thereafter their leaving. The film is a masterstroke of crime drama storytelling, a film whose runtime is never too long and whose sheer scale is never overwhelming; a film whose ability to balance each strand, ranging from everyday 'on-the-beat' cops to undercover narcotics agents, is close to faultless. As far as American thrillers that may or may not contain a good deal of second unit stuff go, it is a breath of fresh air; an appealing, story driven piece with any one of its three strands most likely making decent enough features on their own.Director Antoine Fuqua establishes the uncompromising characteristics that dominate the nature of his film's world during the opening scene, an exchange set in the confines of a parked car in the dead of night. One man speaks to another about how he was justified in recently breaking the law out of self defence. The other man, Ethan Hawke's Detective named Sal Procida, then proceeds to shoot him dead, but only for the large amount of ill-gotten money he had with him – something which will ease his financial woes made apparent out of his unhealthy wife and large family who're all living in a building unfit for them. Above anything else, it is a perfect opening to Procida's strand; a strand built on moral grey areas and he loots and kills for sake of someone else's struggles. Waking up not so far away is Richard Gere's character, he too is a police officer named Eddie Dugan; a single man who sleeps with whisky beside his bed and unloads an empty pistol into his mouth upon getting up. The man is not far from retirement and in a bad state. Finally, Don Cheadle is an undercover narcotics agent named "Tango" Butler; a man deep in the world of housing project-set, African American run drug rings whose efficiency and professionalism is epitomised in a slick, singular take as the camera glides through their interior base of operations from the quasi perspective of Cheadle himself.Fuqua toys with his audience in so much he allows for the least intelligent; least likable and probably most aggressive of the three, in Procida, to want what's best for other people moreover himself. In providing this character with a family, it allows for Hawke's character to occupy the screen without risk of our interest or fondness for the man waning; it allows for his story to play out without the danger of it transferring into an anonymous, bland tale of an anti-hero undeserving of his job title going through the motions. That's not to say his is the best of the three, for Butler's story about working undercover and the apparent brethren he shares with those shady delinquents, as relationships with his police superiors wane, is often shattering. Wanting away from this life of constant fear and danger, he learns the only way to do such a thing is to bring in the boss of the entire outfit: Wesley Snipes' gangster named Caz.The reemergence of Snipes is a curious detail, a man who himself has recently served time in prison and here plays someone who is fresh out and back amongst his kin anyway. Seeing him turn up carries with it an odd air of realism: as if akin to his character suddenly reappearing amidst his own here on set, so too is Caz the wanted man who can finally be nailed by a federal department if Butler plays it right. In this regard, the casting is a masterstroke, and it is impressive that the sudden reappearance of the actor does not soften the impact of the film up to this point nor beyond it.There are thoughts and writings that, in recent years, and something born out of the events of 9/11 in New York City, those more broadly orientated towards jobs in the fire department or police force often always come in for heroic depictions when featuring in American films. Some, the likes of Ladder 49 and such, have almost exclusively revolved around said folk in said roles. Jim Sheridan's 2010 remake of a Danish film entitled "Brothers" inexplicably featured a composition of a fire station façade during its opening montage, a shot you might say was designed, sub-consciously or otherwise, to implement both a sad and romanticised tone from the off. The film is not about firemen – far from it, but it's meant to induce melancholia what better way than to exploit the iconography of a fire station. If you want to see it in this particular way, you might read Fuqua's film as a piece going past all of that and cutting to the grit of the thing: a New York City-set project about those in roles depicted in less than flattering ways and living less than heroic lifestyles where previously we've witnessed otherwise. However you might see it, the film is a more than substantial effort .

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