Brooklyn's Finest falls short

Nowadays, cop films with a fresh take on the world of policing are pretty rare. After watching Antoine Fuqua's recent debut, Brooklyn's Finest, I'm still left searching.

The film is riddled with big name actors that in no way help the movie's progression. It follows the story of three police officers who are all at different stages of their careers. All three work in the same precinct but have little interaction and even less in common. The only thing the three have in common is their incredible lack of morals. Even this is different though, as each officer is terrible in his own way. The movie progresses with three story lines that momentarily intersect at the end of the film.

Although I'm a fan of movies with multiple story lines, it doesn't work here. None of the characters lives are really interesting, and it seems like hours pass before any kind of real plot twist or climax occurs. The film just randomly jumps between the three cops, identifying each of their personal issues. This left me feeling little connection to the characters and even less sympathy for what they were going through.

The issues themselves were cliché. Eddie, Richard Gere, is at the end of his career and is just trying to survive his last few days on the job. Kind of like Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon 3, except Eddie was just sort of sad and defeated.

Tango, Don Cheadle, is an undercover narcotics officer who has started to question which team he plays for. He develops personal relationships with his suspects and starts to have sympathetic feelings for his boss drug dealer Caz, Wesley Snipes. I can't count how many times this plot has been used. I found no reason to pay attention to the film when Cheadle was on the screen.

Lastly, there was the poor cop character Sal, Ethan Hawke, struggling to make enough money for his wife and kids. The movie never really told you how many kids he had. There was a just a new child introduced every time Sal had a scene at home, and his wife was pregnant with twins. The simple solution to his money woes is to invest in condoms, but no, Sal spends an hour-and-a-half of this movie debating whether or not he will take drug money instead.

The last 20 minutes do have some redeeming qualities. The three stories intersect, which is always nice to see, and every character embraces a new way of life. This doesn't make up for the rest of the film, which is less entertaining then actually being arrested.