Brooklyn's Finest C

Brooklyn's Finest is a well crafted drama that feels all too familiar.
At this state of the game, the three interlocking story lines gimmick has become as familiar as an episode of Law And Order. Richard Gere is an old cop just counting the minutes until his retirement. He's saddled with the lazy man's training day scenario when he's stuck showing a rookie the ropes. But on his beat, the ropes include picking up a fishing pole, exploiting rules to allow you to keep the peace, and taking a really long lunch.

Ethan Hawke, looking uncomfortably gaunt, is a family man who has made a new house and the pursuit of money an idol he's willing to kill for in the name of providing for his family. He's Catholic and has what seems like a dozen children, with two more on the way and a moldy old overcrowded house that he desperately wants to move out of. So he only goes on cases where there's a high probability of stealing drug money.

Finally Don Cheadle is an undercover officer in the brooklyn projects who desperately wants a promotion, a desk job, and all the boring regularity that entails. But to get what he wants he's asked to betray his old cellmate and friend, a drug kingpin played by recent direct to dvd veteran Wesley Snipes.

Cheadle fares best taking a familiar story and doing his best to make the audience feel and care about the problems he's going through. Gere however acts too much like Richard Gere. He's on autopilot staring blankly into space while downing a shot of whiskey and watching the clock. So his inevitable conclusion feels a little forced because it doesn't really speak to the character and speaks more to Richard Gere having to end up as some kind of reluctant hero. Ethan Hawke is somewhere in the middle.

The problem is these three storylines don't really all add up to much. It's a fairly conventional story that leads up to a fairly conventional ending that pretty much ends like you expect. There's nothing here to surprise you and nothing to elevate it above just another mediocre run of the mill picture that you'll have trouble remembering the next day. It's a gentleman's C. But it's still a C.

Brooklyn's Finest: C