Pride and Glory
All cops are corrupt, especially the good ones.
The life of a street cop in New York City must be a hard one. You see things that no human being should ever have to see. And you have to pick sides. So when Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) strays a little or maybe more than a little, will his brothers in blue (and in law) back him up, or uphold the law? This movie takes the whole good cop/bad cop thing and kicks it up a notch. There are some shocking scenes, but I never thought the violence (or threat of violence) was merely gratuitous. That is a sign of a very good movie.
Jon Voight plays the patriarch of an Irish-American family of NYPD officers. His two sons, played by Noah Emmerich and Edward Norton are also cops, one (Emmerich) a captain. And his daughter is married to a cop (Farrell), who works in Emerrich’s precinct. The movie takes place over a few frantic days after 4 cops are killed in an arrest gone bad.
Director and co-writer Gavin O’Connor was able to blend in a very believable home life for these policemen. This can be a difficult thing to do for an action movie and is an indication that the writing was top notch. My only complaint about the directing is that the first 15 minutes of the movie plays more like an episode of ‘Cops’ filmed mostly with hand held cameras that shook way too much for my tastes. Another tribute to just how good this movie was written is that my irritability factor soon diminished as I fell deeper into the story. Maybe O’Connor thought the ‘realism’ of the hand held camera would draw the audience into the scene more? I don’t know, but it was a miscalculated effort in my opinion.
Hand held scenes aside, the movie was fantastic. Colin Farrell and Edward Norton were very good, and so was lesser known actor Noah Emmerich (Jim Carrey’s best friend in The Truman Show). But Jon Voight’s performance was Oscar worthy. I would be surprised if he is not nominated for this role.
One last thing, if you don’t speak Spanish, you might be a bit lost during some of the scenes where the criminals speak Spanish for the most part, and there are no subtitles. I am not sure why the choice was made to omit the subtitles, and since I do speak Spanish, I almost missed that fact until my non-bilingual friend mentioned it. But don’t let that sway you, you will enjoy this movie.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Yea, I am the gringo who doesn’t speak Spanglish, heh. This film was truly amazing and while Voight and Emmerich gave commanding performances, I think the real Oscar should go to Jennifer Ehle who gave a very convincing performance as Emmerich’s wife. I was going to give this one 4.5 stars, but wanted Aceman to give a good write up since we haven’t heard from him in awhile.
Before the screening we were actually given a disclaimer that some of the scenes might be too intense for women and sensitive types. None of the women around me had to fly to the exits, but I knew right away which scenes they were talking about, and I am sure this film might drum up controversy for being extreme for the sake of publicity and buzz. However, none of these scenes were out of place, and while visceral and disturbing – nothing you couldn’t think of in your twisted views of our all too cruel world.
This is one I would highly suggest seeing in theaters and not wait for DVD release. I think the terms ground-breaking and gripping are too commonly used, so let me say this film was ugly and passionate, drawing you in with baneful aplomb. Aint I a cunning linguist?