In 2001, Antoine Fuqua directed Ethan Hawke to an Oscar nomination in the down-and-dirty cop drama Training Day.  Now, the two are reuniting for Brooklyn’s Finest, another gritty cop drama, but this time with far poorer results.

Hawke stars as Sal, a Brooklyn cop who’s stashing confiscated drug money in hopes of buying a new home for his wife and their seemingly endless parade of kids.  He shares screen time in this ensemble with two other main characters: Richard Gere’s retiring Eddie and Don Cheadle’s undercover Tango.  Their three stories constantly cross paths, while never quite ever coming together.

With only a few days left before he retires, the suicidal Eddie wants to stay under the radar just as he has his entire career.  Unfortunately, the higher-ups have decided to pair him with one of the force’s younger cops.  It’s a decision that he fights vigorously, but in the end it may save him.  Meanwhile, Tango finds himself conflicted when the Feds want to use his undercover connections to put away a felon who once saved his life.

If these characters sound familiar, it’s because they are all walking clichés. Going in, I at least had hopes for Wesley Snipes, who was making his first big screen appearance since 2004’s Blade: Trinity.  Unfortunately, this one might have been better had it gone straight-to-DVD as well.  There is not a single original character or idea in Brooklyn’s Finest and the result had the preview audience complaining of those two-plus hours they will never get back.

Even trapped inside their cliché characters, all of the principal actors are decent.  Unfortunately, none of them are good enough to raise the movie above the poor material.  They needed to be, too, because the supporting actors really brought the movie down.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the performance of Ellen Barkin as a tough-talking FBI agent.  Barkin spends all of her screen time violently squinting and aggressively pouting her lips in an attempt to look tough.  It’s one of the worst performances I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness as it can only be described as awful.  The only positive thing about her performance is that one of the movie’s few memorable moments is a joke made at her character’s expense.

The movie takes itself way too seriously.  The camera is constantly moving slowly towards or away from a character who is contemplating as if he were “The Thinker” statue and the music is constantly too much. The results are some scenes that just come off as silly, as evidenced by the frequent chuckles of the audience.  Nowhere is this more apparent than Fuqua’s decision to combine a moment of character revelation with a portrayal of oral sex.

The movie is made even worse by some poor production values, including some very odd focus decisions and distracting objects entering the screen at random moments.  Also, why does Don Cheadle keep looking directly into the camera?  And would someone please explain why Ethan Hawke has so many kids?

The movie just gets worse as it goes along, and, seemingly unable to find a way for Fuqua and screenwriter Michael C. Martin to end the movie smartly or creatively, the bullets just fly in the final act.  Perhaps no one can sum up Brooklyn’s Finest better than a gentleman in the back row of the advance screening I attended.  As soon as the film ended, he shouted “Boooooo!” I bet few would disagree.

Brooklyn’s Finest is rated R for “bloody violence throughout, strong sexuality, nudity, drug content and pervasive language.”  This movie is a solid R and for exactly those reasons mentioned in the rationale.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Brooklyn’s Finest.