Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
With enough rich material for three separate films, director Antoine Fuqua's spiritual companion piece to his best work to date, TRAINING DAY, is BROOKLYN'S FINEST, a triptych of police stories about three officers at critical points in their lives and jobs where they must make decision that will morally compromise everything they are supposed to stand for. As much as Fuqua is still finding his footing as a director (with missteps that led him to KING ARTHUR or TEARS OF THE SUN), I think this is the place where he exists most comfortably, by showing us these desperate men's character and honor get slowly chipped away by the world around them.
It's tough to pick a favorite storyline, but I think the section of the film I would have liked most to see become its own feature is the segment about an undercover cop named Clarence (Don Cheadle), who as drug lieutenant "Tango" has immersed himself in the life so deeply that when his long-incarcerated boss Caz (Wesley Snipes in a true return to form) gets out of prison, the two start making plans to expand the business. The problem is Tango wants out of the life that he's been living far too long. His handler (Will Patton) is trying to make that happen, along with a promotion. But as Caz realigns his underlings, tensions flare and Tango knows that trouble is brewing, and he wants to be gone before that happens. What Cheadle is pulling off here is remarkable. He's playing a cop who needs to be seen as a dangerous and threatening authority figure, who isn't actually allowed to kill anybody. So he uses all the acting tricks in the book to put the fear of God into his employees on the street. It's been a while since he's flexed those muscles, and there are few as good as him at doing it.
Another story is more familiar--that of Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), a cop with a wife (Lili Taylor) and a big brood of kids living in a cramped, mold-infested home that is making his pregnant wife ill. What he needs is money, and he sees it--lots of it--every time he goes on a raid of a drug dealer's house. It's there for the taking, but he knows that doing so crosses a line he's not sure he can wander over. Hawke is most convincing to me when he's playing these twitchy, wiry guys, and that's Sal in a nutshell. He sweats just thinking about money and about the down-payment he needs to make on a new house that about to slip through his fingers. He sees the opportunity more than once, but something always interrupts the moment. When he finally does make his move, well, let's just say it's explosive. Hawke's only Oscar nomination for acting came in Fuqua's TRAINING DAY, and the two just know how to make things happen and give us just enough of a taste of these character to get the whole picture. Sal's '70s-style long leather jacket and dated hairstyle, not to mention the ugly colors in his home, all are signs that Fuqua might not care if we forget exactly what decade BROOKLYN'S FINEST is occurring. Although the stories is different, this is Fuqua's SERPICO, his MEAN STREETS, his HARDCORE, his SUPER FLY.
The third story might be the most interesting, and it features a character that you never see in movies about police officers. Richard Gere plays Eddie Dugan, a beat cop just days from retiring who has made a career for himself being unremarkable. He has no disciplinary problems, but he also is without commendations. He just wanted to put in his time, and retire with a pension. He has no wife, although he has a steady hooker that he's fond of. I'm so used to watching Gere play often larger-than-life characters, it's kind of great to watch him blend into the wallpaper and shrink from view. Since he's the senior most vet, the department has decided (unwisely) to pair him with a rookie and show him how to handle himself on the street. No one seems particularly thrilled with the situation, but he takes a couple of newbies out with him and essentially teaches them how to handle themselves on a call without getting killed or starting a race riot. He's not entirely successful. But his story doesn't end with his retirement. Just after he's turned in his gun and badge and decided how he would like to live out his remaining time on earth, he spots a young woman, clearly drugged, getting dragged into a van by two men. Eddie follows the van, and what occurs from that point forward is almost too unbelievable to say (and I wouldn't anyway because it's a surprise). The moral of the story is that sometimes the least noble person makes the biggest gesture when you don't expect it. Sal's story is the only one that doesn't feel slightly truncated, but I didn't mind the abbreviated plots.
The film flows seamlessly from one story to the next, and Fuqua builds each sequence up until a tension-filled series of conclusions that will leave you slightly speechless for a time. I wasn't kidding when I said there was enough material here for three separate movies, and sometimes these worlds feel a bit cramped. Of course the minds of these three men probably feel the same way, as the judgement is testing and nobility tested. Some fare the test; others succeed in unexpected ways. But the cumulative effect is quietly devastating, and that's the best type of devastation. The film is bleak and brutal at times, but it never felt forced or false, even with a few hyped up performances by some of the supporting cast. I was genuinely moved by BROOKLYN'S FINEST. Check this one out.
-- Capone
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