Pride and Glory
Crime dramas are a dime a dozen. Good crime dramas- well, that depends on what side of the law you’re talking about. This one- this is a very good one. Ok, the film creeps into melodrama near the end when crisis’ of conscience and honor hit you with all the subtlety of a billy club, but while the film doesn’t quite hit “L.A. Confidential” heights of greatness- and lacks the fictional fireworks of this year’s underrated “Street Kings”- there’s a profoundly lived-in feel to the story that propels it past the fictional trappings of the story and make it come to life. And it’s no wonder- co-writer/director Gavin O’Connor, who co-wrote the story with brother Gregory (and enlisted “Narc” writer-director Joe Carnahan to co-write the script), come from a family of Irish NY cops, so they know the turf.
The actors, though, are the ones who really bring it home. Leading the way is Edward Norton, a professional risk-taker (who else could be Oscar-nominated as a reformed skinhead in “American History X” and, ten years later, hit it out of the franchise park with Marvel’s “The Incredible Hulk?”) who is hard-boiled and hot-under-the-collar as Ray Tierney, a detective in the NYPD in a family full of boys in blue. Family patriarch Francis Sr. (the superb Jon Voight) is a police chief who follows a strict code of “protect your own”; brother Francis Jr. (Noah Emmerich, who has forged a career as an expert character actor in films including “The Truman Show” and “Little Children,” and continues that in this film) is in command at the 31st Precinct, where their sister’s husband Jimmy (Colin Farrell) calls his professional home. One night, while Jimmy is playing in a football game with professional rivals- with Francis Jr. and Ray watching- four of Jimmy’s unit get gunned down in a drug bust gone wrong. Francis Sr. helps push Ray- who’s been working missing people cases for two years- into heading a task force to look into the case, but the deeper Ray looks, the more unsettling the facts get.
From the title, O’Connor’s film seems like it should be a heroic look at NY’s Finest in the same way Ron Howard’s “Backdraft” glorified firemen, despite its’ overtly melodramatic thriller story. But such an approach would have struck the wrong note for this film. In the end, the force’s code of honor and justice is upheld in ways that capture the selflessness that goes with the job, but that illuminates the tough questions that must sometimes be asked in carrying out your duties. This is about how loyalty to your fellow officer can get in the way of loyalty to family, and about how family can get in the way of being true to uphold the law. John Woo illuminated this duality brilliantly in his Hong Kong crime thrillers- the first two “Better Tomorrows,” “The Killer,” and “Hard-Boiled”- and it’s a theme Hollywood has explored for years (look at “White Heat” and even “GoodFellas,” along with “L.A. Confidential”). O’Connor strikes the nerve even closer to home; even though the typical announcement of the film as a work of fiction, and how any similarities to anyone living or dead is “entirely coincidental” (a disclaimer typically at the end of movies, but before the credits role here), you get the feeling that O’Connor knows the turf pretty well, given his background.
The actors he’s enlisted trust his judgement. Norton is excellent as a man whose loyalty to the force over the truth cost him the love of his life, and is so skilled a dramatic actor that his self-doubts when his loyalty to family over the law are palpable, and make us wonder how we would act under such circumstances. Matching him step-for-step is Farrell, who had his stardom fallout after his increasingly-public private life got wild and his popularlity dropped off after Oliver Stone’s limp “Alexander,” is finding his juice again with another sharp and sympathetic turn here (after his triumph earlier this year in “In Bruges”); Jimmy’s moral compass is off, but his loyalty to his men and his family is undeniable. Though it ratchets up the melodrama to an absurd level (which brought to mind Paul Haggis’ equally-overwrought “Crash”), the most lasting image you’ll have is of Ray and Jimmy, surrounded by bystanders looking for blood when a corrupt cop beats up a convenience store clerk, only to have the clerk kill the cop, find their own ways to atone for their mistakes of the past, and find their own paths towards their own sense of pride and glory. In this moment, O’Connor’s film gets to the heart of its’ tough choices, and digs to the true natures of its’ characters…and its’ larger subject of what a career in service of others means.
