Brooklyn's Finest: Snipes, Cheadle, Hawke and Gere

Written by Jonathan Jacobs

Brooklyn’s Finest is like a gourmet recipe with all of the right ingredients. They are fresh, in the perfect quantities and the come together tastefully at the end. There are three prominent storylines that intersect at the close of the film. It is anyone’s guess how the storylines will unfold. One thing is for sure though, whether you react harshly or strongly toward this picture, it is thoroughly unpredictable.

     Richard Gere plays Eddie, a conflicted police officer nearing the end of his career. Closure is a mere seven days away. Unfortunately Eddie’s first scene is one with a dangerous game. He is playing Russian roulette with his life. We later find out he normally keeps his gun unloaded as he is mostly uninterested in violence or conflict. As part of a new program Eddie is assigned the role of mentoring a newly minted officer in one of the worst districts of Brooklyn. Unfortunately for the rookie (an optimistic marine dedicated to law enforcement) Eddie is both a horrible mentor and completely selfish at this stage of his career. This leads to the young man transferring to the tutelage of a different officer. Tragically, his partner for one day is gunned down on day two of his dream job. On day two Eddie is given the responsibility of protecting yet another rookie. This recruit seems more his mentor’s style. He is however inexperienced and reckless. This leads to his grand mistake, deafening a teenager in a minor dispute inside of a convenient store. Eddie’s other addiction (aside from apathy and Russian roulette) is Shannon Kane, a demur prostitute with a smooth way and an ego stroking ability. Despite her sexual appetites Eddie is passionately in love with her and near the end attempts some misplaced romantic gestures with our lady of fortune. The scenes with her are both horrid and hilarious. She is a sexual machine and rather unclean but this does not phase our unclearly intentioned officer. At one point he watches her satisfy a member of the police force, thus performing her civic duty, and while wiping her vagina clean he approaches her for further relations. The unnerving end of their unsavory relationship leads Eddie to become a hero in a scenario he was never comfortable with as a commissioned officer.

     Ethan Hawke plays Officer Sal, a man in the unique position of having five children of various ages and a set of twins on the way. Unfortunately our deeply religious public servant cannot afford a larger or more sanitary house to accommodate his gargantuan family. Apparently a police officer’s salary which includes a pension, free health care, and a guaranteed government salary does not allow him to move into an apartment or a neighborhood which does not contaminate his wife’s lungs with wood asbestos. Perhaps Sal needs to seek the counsel of a real estate agent rather than a priest? Sal has resigned himself to being a murderer of criminals (does that not make him a cold-blooded killer?) insofar as they have spare cash around. Unfortunately the money is karmaically "blood money", a concept not lost on the director who follows a recent trend of having blood spots flash briefly on screen before bloodletting occurs. As the film opens Sal is in the middle of chatting with the slow and dim-witted Vincent D’Onofrio (seriously this guy needs to learn how to speak more than ten words a minute) when he flat out executes him dead. Now that is one cold act of murder. After this killing Hawke is faced with several more opportunities to steal more money than he already has taken but he is noticed in the act and thus defers thuntil a later date. Unfortunately he is illegally doing a favor for the real estate agent handling the sale of his dream house. She is holding the house for him, but still without enough money, and against the wishes of his best friend Ronnie (Brian F. O’Byrne) he is planning a major heist/murdering spree of Brooklyn’s most corrupt.

     Don Cheadle plays Tango, an undercover officer looking to make Detective First Grade at any price. His best friend Caz is played by recently tax undermined Wesley Snipes. Given that this is Snipes’ first major foray back into feature films since his legal battles, I will offer him a B for a mediocre but fluid performance. I prefer Snipes as the lead, not as a follower. Tango is involved with a street gang in the sale and exchange of narcotics. His character Tango is equally as shady and ambiguous as Sal and Eddie are. Feeling slighted by the PD and their new grim reaper Agent Smith (Ellen Barkin), Tango is inclined to help his best friend Caz with one final deal in order to earn enough money to disappear. Unfortunately Caz has enemies and Tango is not prescient to the death that is about to occur. His ultimate demise will be shocking to the whole audience.

     In the last third of Brooklyn’s Finest Eddie, Caz, Tango, Ronnie and Sal become connected by proximity and by a twist of fate. I will not dare spoil the ending and the surprises as they are worth waiting two hours for. Needless to say audiences will feel vindicated more than abused, and excited more than apathetic. There is no magic sentence that can define what this movie means, what it hopes to represent and what lasting impression it may or may not leave etched in your mind. Even so, it is well-executed, the music and the volume are pumped up, the acting if first class, and the amount of blood spilled is simply phenomenal. This picture is a real gusher. Somebody mop the floor damn it, this one gets really down and dirty. Brooklyn’s Finest proves that cop dramas may be in high supply, but they are in high demand as well. The concept is always appealing if presented with a new twist, a new location and talented actors. Cheadle, Gere and Hawke deserve an awful lot of applause, three cheers gents.