Brooklyn's Finest tells three respective tales of a trio of very different people more broadly connected to the police force of New York City; three people who each alike want 'out' of their respective lives and lifestyles within the force, three people who live and operate in very different capacities therein the force, but look forward to the new ventures and pastures to follow thereafter their leaving. The film is a masterstroke of crime drama storytelling, a film whose runtime is never too long and whose sheer scale is never overwhelming; a film whose ability to balance each strand, ranging from everyday 'on-the-beat' cops to undercover narcotics agents, is close to faultless. As far as American thrillers that may or may not contain a good deal of second unit stuff go, it is a breath of fresh air; an appealing, story driven piece with any one of its three strands most likely making decent enough features on their own.
Director Antoine Fuqua establishes the uncompromising characteristics that dominate the nature of his film's world during the opening scene, an exchange set in the confines of a parked car in the dead of night. One man speaks to another about how he was justified in recently breaking the law out of self defence. The other man, Ethan Hawke's Detective named Sal Procida, then proceeds to shoot him dead, but only for the large amount of ill-gotten money he had with him – something which will ease his financial woes made apparent out of his unhealthy wife and large family who're all living in a building unfit for them. Above anything else, it is a perfect opening to Procida's strand; a strand built on moral grey areas and he loots and kills for sake of someone else's struggles. Waking up not so far away is Richard Gere's character, he too is a police officer named Eddie Dugan; a single man who sleeps with whisky beside his bed and unloads an empty pistol into his mouth upon getting up. The man is not far from retirement and in a bad state. Finally, Don Cheadle is an undercover narcotics agent named "Tango" Butler; a man deep in the world of housing project-set, African American run drug rings whose efficiency and professionalism is epitomised in a slick, singular take as the camera glides through their interior base of operations from the quasi perspective of Cheadle himself.
Fuqua toys with his audience in so much he allows for the least intelligent; least likable and probably most aggressive of the three, in Procida, to want what's best for other people moreover himself. In providing this character with a family, it allows for Hawke's character to occupy the screen without risk of our interest or fondness for the man waning; it allows for his story to play out without the danger of it transferring into an anonymous, bland tale of an anti-hero undeserving of his job title going through the motions. That's not to say his is the best of the three, for Butler's story about working undercover and the apparent brethren he shares with those shady delinquents, as relationships with his police superiors wane, is often shattering. Wanting away from this life of constant fear and danger, he learns the only way to do such a thing is to bring in the boss of the entire outfit: Wesley Snipes' gangster named Caz.
The reemergence of Snipes is a curious detail, a man who himself has recently served time in prison and here plays someone who is fresh out and back amongst his kin anyway. Seeing him turn up carries with it an odd air of realism: as if akin to his character suddenly reappearing amidst his own here on set, so too is Caz the wanted man who can finally be nailed by a federal department if Butler plays it right. In this regard, the casting is a masterstroke, and it is impressive that the sudden reappearance of the actor does not soften the impact of the film up to this point nor beyond it.
There are thoughts and writings that, in recent years, and something born out of the events of 9/11 in New York City, those more broadly orientated towards jobs in the fire department or police force often always come in for heroic depictions when featuring in American films. Some, the likes of Ladder 49 and such, have almost exclusively revolved around said folk in said roles. Jim Sheridan's 2010 remake of a Danish film entitled "Brothers" inexplicably featured a composition of a fire station façade during its opening montage, a shot you might say was designed, sub-consciously or otherwise, to implement both a sad and romanticised tone from the off. The film is not about firemen – far from it, but it's meant to induce melancholia what better way than to exploit the iconography of a fire station. If you want to see it in this particular way, you might read Fuqua's film as a piece going past all of that and cutting to the grit of the thing: a New York City-set project about those in roles depicted in less than flattering ways and living less than heroic lifestyles where previously we've witnessed otherwise. However you might see it, the film is a more than substantial effort .
