The greatest movie ever made..!

Fantastic!

Am I Missing Something?

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This film isn't difficult to watch because as a viewer you assume multiple characters are being built separately to eventually combine. The building part is not done badly, the acting is OK, and the music builds some tension. But then they the multiple stories never combine. The film just ends. 2 stars for basic film/acting quality, 1 extra because I actually found it funny how bad this story is.

Man, this is one grim story. Brooklyn is bad enough to start with. Gone are the days of joking about Brooklyn accents or the Dodgers or enjoying Coney Island. Now it's darkness, drugs, and danger.The narrative cuts back and forth between three mostly unrelated stories. Richard Gere is an old timer about to retire and doesn't bother to discharge his duties in a moral way. Don Cheadle is an honest undercover cop who has old friends in the hood and is tempted to betray one of them in return for a promotion. Ethan Hawke, who overacts outrageously, is a religious family man in serious financial trouble who decides to murder and rob a gang of drug dealers so his wife can have their twins safely in some leafy suburb.Two of them break the law, one out of a desire for vengeance, the other for pecuniary reasons. They pay for their transgressions. The one who survives has nothing in particular to live for.The performances are all of professional caliber, except I wish Ethan Hawke could have stopped acting as if he were just coming down from battery acid or something. Odd expressions and sniffing during pauses -- that's John Malkovitch's territory.The direction by Fuqua is functional and generally avoid the stylish and unnerving shaky camera of the average action flick. Some borrowings from Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock may be observed.It's a movie that really gets down in the dirt, with enough action to keep action fans' attention, but also with less violent but equally emotional issues -- a man's love for a professional prostitute, allegiances torn apart by circumstances, that sort of thing.

Brooklyn's Finest (2009): Dir: Antoine Fuqua / Cast: Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, Lili Taylor: Excellent cop drama thriller about image. It follows three distinctive cops who are poised to go the wrong directions. Richard Gere plays a veteran officer of 32 years who is a week away from retirement but hates his job. His only friend seems to be a prostitute. He guzzles liquor in the morning and forces himself to undertake the daily tasks, which includes rookie training. During one of his down moments he is redeemed when he comes across a sex dungeon where three women are held prisoner. Ethan Hawke plays an officer who is married and has two children and twins on the way. He murders drug dealers and steals the money to pay for a home for his family. Unlike Gere who will find redemption, Hawke further falls from grace until ultimate consequence take effect. Don Cheadle plays an undercover officer who yearns for a desk job. He is promised such if he sets up a criminal friend who just got out of prison. When he decides against the setup it is too late and he learns what true law corruption is. Wesley Snipes plays a criminal whom Cheadle is reluctant to bring down due to a past friendship. This is one of the best performances by Snipes who is not guilty, but deemed guilty only by law officials. Lili Taylor plays Hawke's wife who is pregnant with twins and worried about their living conditions. Directed with insight by Antoine Fuqua who previously made Training Day. The film examines the flaws of these officers and the duties they are assigned to fulfil. Score: 10 / 10

I can't say that I found anything particularly noteworthy about "Brooklyn's Finest." The title gives the clearest signal as to what it's about: NYPD officers in Brooklyn - one (Richard Gere) just a few days from retirement and largely uninterested in the job and so playing out the string, one (Ethan Hawke) struggling with finances as he awaits the arrival of twins, and one (Don Cheadle) hoping to get out of undercover work and be promoted to detective. They aren't connected to each other, but they get unknowingly caught up in the same drug investigation, and the movie morphs into yet another of those "unrelated stories that eventually intersect" plots. No, I'm not really a big fan of that format.The leads are strong enough. Gere, Cheadle, and Hawke all do well enough, and they all pull off the challenge of being largely unsympathetic characters who at the same time have sympathetic elements to them. They all have their own personal demons and challenges. Add Wesley Snipes into the mix and you have a solid cast. It is, however, quite heavy on clichés. The police are untrustworthy and unreliable to say the least and pretty much every black character is either a drug dealer, a pimp or a prostitute (or at least is sympathetic to them.) Eventually (and interspersed throughout) this descends into little more than a blood bath. Most importantly, it just really isn't that interesting. Every movie needs a redeeming character for the viewer to identify with and root for. This movie had no redeeming characters of note.Overall, this is really just a reasonably well-acted but largely unpleasant movie. (4/10)