Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
10/26/08
Of all the little nooks and
crannies of film criticism, the hardest thing to quantify is the simple
fact that some things do and some things don't grab our interest.
I can point to a lot of things that go right with Pride & Glory,
the new film from the director of my favorite movie of 2004, Miracle.
It's got excellent performances that do a really tremendous job summoning
the realistic dynamic of a quietly dysfunctional family. As a police
thriller, it includes moments of effectively shocking violence. But
the one thing it couldn't do was engage my attention. As its' mystery
plot sprawled on and supporting characters filibustered through scenes
that worked in and of themselves but did nothing to advance the plot, my
mind wandered. And I can't really recommend a movie I struggled to
focus on, can I?
A spirited NYPD football
game is broken up by shocking news: a bust gone awry has led to the
shooting deaths of 4 officers under the command of Francis Tierney Jr.
(Noah Emmerich). A task force is quickly assembled, and Francis Tierney
Sr. (Jon Voigt) moves quickly to assure that his other son Ray (Edward
Norton) is on it. Ray's been hiding out in a desk job since an incident
two years back that's clearly shattered his confidence and thrown his personal
life into disarray. But the task force isn't the only entity looking
into the murders. The rest of Tierney's unit, led by Franny &
Ray's brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell), is looking to pick up
the pieces of an operation that was intended to deal them in as major players
in the New York drug trade. Franny's been asleep at the wheel because
his wife Abby (Jennifer Ehle) is dying of cancer. Once Ray starts
to figure out what's going on, he finds himself caught between loyalty
to the NYPD, loyalty to his family, and the truth he learned two years
ago: that living a lie isn't living at all.
Like Miracle, Pride
& Glory trades on an impressive sense of realism, all the more
impressive since the cast is filled not with young unknowns but established
character actors. It's career-best work for Emmerich, who radiates
both leadership and naiveté while always being convincingly vulnerable
due to the tragedy at home. Voigt hasn't been this good in years:
Francis is a drunk, plain and simple, and he totally nails that horrible
unease that a chatty, maudlin drunk injects into a room, doubly so when
he's an authority figure. Norton's Ray has allowed fate to make him
a loser, and his passive, wussy body language tells his story long before
the movie gets around to it. Farrell struggles a bit with the New
York accent, but he's always been good at violent characters, and Jimmy
is an absolute monster when it comes to the potential for explosive violence.
The man actually threatens a baby with an iron at one point, and you can
see in his eyes that he'd actually do it. But he also does a great
job with the rationalizing Jimmy, the one who tells us that anything is
OK as long as he's doing it for his family. Ehle is heartbreakingly
convincing as a cancer patient, and the supporting cast is chock full of
strong performances.
But that's part of the problem
because, unlike Miracle and its' immortal sports legend, Pride
& Glory doesn't have a driving narrative throughline, and O'Connor
is more than happy to keep lingering on everything as it lumbers along.
The screenplay (by O'Connor and John Carnahan) devotes far too many resources
to the investigation of a mystery that's not even a little bit mysterious
to the viewer, and far too much screentime to the other corrupt cops Jimmy
works with and a crusading reporter who shows up late in the game.
There's a whole misjudged civil rights violation subplot complete with
protest marchers and a Rodney King-style riot that exists primarily as
a deux ex machina to resolve the movie's central conflict in the least
dramatic way possible.
They say that screenwriters
need to “kill their babies” (perhaps not with an iron...) and sacrifice
scenes and characters that don't advance the narrative, and Pride &
Glory serves as exhibit A why that advice is given. Yes, I can
see what O'Connor and his co-writers (his brother Greg and Robert Hopes
are co-credited with the story) saw in each little look at the home life
of the various players, the moral transgressions of the other cops, and
the reporter's investigation, but some of this stuff has to either go or
be folded into other scenes. I was really surprised to learn that
only 125 minutes passed while I watched Pride & Glory:
as it sprawls on and on, it feels like a movie pushing the 2:30 mark.
I can imagine die-hard fans
of the NYPD cop thriller having a really good time at Pride & Glory:
it puts an above-average set of characters through the familiar paces of
the genre. But to enliven those paces for the rest of us requires
more. It's not a good sign for a thriller when the weakest parts
are the plot, and the dueling investigations of Ray's task force and Jimmy's
goons bored me to tears. There's a lot to like about this movie:
you just have to stay awake long enough to see it. |
