In the movie “Brooklyn Finest,” there are three stories being told. Director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “King Arthur,” “Tears of the Sun”) does a good job weaving the sub-plots in and out of each other. Some of the characters cross each other’s path as they continue to walk in their own story. Always an interesting element in films.
Fuqua takes us into a world of bad people -- who are drug dealers, and their cronies -- corrupt cops and kidnappers and sprinkled with some loyalty and pride, all within a social system that no one can win and some may not live through.
The film has a strong cast with Don Cheadle as Tango, a.k.a. Clarence, a cop deep undercover who wants to get out. His boss, Lt. Bill Hobarts (played by Will Patton), keeps giving him weak assurances that he will be relieved of his duties with a promotion.
Of course, Hobarts wants one more job out of Tango, which includes getting a drug dealer just released from prison on appeal back behind bars. The rub comes that Caz saved Tango’s life while the latter was undercover in prison, and Tango feels it’s not fair to get the man he’s indebted to. In a case of amazing casting, Wesley Snipes (“New Jack City,” “Blade”) plays Caz. It’s good to see Snipes in a mainstream movie rather than a straight-to-DVD film.
In another storyline, Ethan Hawke, (“Training Day”) plays Sal, a Brooklyn cop who is in serious need of money. Feeling pressure to take care of his family and desperate to get money for another house, Sal starts to rob drug dealers when he busts them.
In the third story. Richard Gere (“Internal Affairs”) is Eddie Dugan, a veteran who is seven days away from retirement. He wants a quiet week, but the brass forces him to take rookies out on patrol. The rookies are knuckleheads who don’t listen, and that makes the week not so quiet. What makes the Eddie character great is Gere, who has a quiet presence, yet he shows he is suffering from a less than stellar police career.
“Brooklyn’s Finest” has a lot of profanity with street slang you may need a dictionary to figure out. Yet it is an interesting film because you cannot predict what will happen next. You will be as surprised as the characters are as what happens to them.
edited by Michele Ristich Gatts
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