Brooklyn's Finest

Richard Gere Director: Antoine Fuqua Antoine Fuqua

Overview

Training Day director Antoine Fuqua takes viewers on a dark ride through the streets of Brooklyn, following three New York Police officers as they wrestle with temptation, loyalty, and duty while attempting to uphold the law and deal with the pressures of the job. Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere) is days away from retirement, but he's been burnt-out for years. Unable to remember why he signed up for the job in the first place, all Eddie can think about is retreating to his fishing cabin in Connecticut, and forgetting the horrors that he's seen during his decades on the job. At the same time, undercover narcotics cop Clarence "Tango" Butler (Don Cheadle) is right in the thick of it. As hard as he tries to quit, however, his superiors always find a way of keeping him on the job. Much like Dugan, he's lost sight of his priorities, and these days Tango's loyalties seem to lie more with notorious inner-city drug dealer Caz (Wesley Snipes) than with the boys in blue. And Tango isn't the only cop who's being drawn to the dark side of the law; narcotics officer Sal Procida's (Ethan Hawke) wife is currently pregnant with twins, and he's barely making enough to keep his family afloat. When Sal learns that his wife is at risk of losing their unborn children, desperation drives him to consider unethical means of ensuring financial stability. In seven days, the lives of all three officers will converge at one crime scene as the NYPD attempts to clean up the BK projects, the epicenter of lawlessness in the highest-crime precinct.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/06/2010
UPC:	0013132140193
Original Release:	2009
Rating:	R
Source:	Starz / Anchor Bay
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Time:	2:12:00
Sales rank:	3,708

Special Features

Audio commentary with director Antoine Fuqua; Chaos & conflict: the life of a New York cop; Boyz n the real hood; An eye for detail: director featurette; From the mta to the wga: writer featurette; Deleted scene

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Richard Gere	Eddie Dugan
Don Cheadle	Clarence "Tango" Butler
Ethan Hawke	Sal Procida
Wesley Snipes	Caz
Vincent D'Onofrio	Carlo
Brian F. O'Byrne	Ronny Rosario
Will Patton	Lt. Bill Hobarts
Michael Kenneth Williams	Red
Lili Taylor	Angela
Shannon Kane	Chantel
Ellen Barkin	Agent Smith
Wass Stevens	Det. Patrick Leary
Armando Riesco	Det. George Montress
Wade Allain-Marcus	C-Rayz
Logan Marshall-Green	Melvin Panton
Hassan Johnson	Beamer
Jas Anderson	K. Rock
John D'Leo	Vinny
George DeNoto	Vito
Alison Cordaro	Vicky
Francesca Carchia	Lynette
Raquel Castro	Katherine
Stella Maeve	Cynthia
Gwen Stith	Myeisha
Joshua Thompson	JoJo
Bruce MacVittie	Father Scarpitta
Robert John Burke	State Trooper #1
Jerry Speziale	Captain Geraci
Sarah Thompson	Sarie
Rodney "Bear" Jackson	Suspicious Man #1
Cle "Bone" Sloan	"The Dragon"
Michael Pemberton	Captain Jenkins
Zaire Paige	Man Man
Gregory Young	Wiz
Randy Eastman	J-Mill
Thomas Jefferson Byrd	Uncle Jeb
Alain Lautre	Kid With Braids
Joseph Adams	Doctor
Alok Tewari	Pakistani Man
Matlok	Student
Zachary Fuqua	Z-Man
Lela Rochon	Investigator #1
Ed Moran	Investigator #2
Isiah Whitlock	Investigator #3
Leonid Citer	Union Rep
Nicoye Banks	Slim
Tobias Truvillion	Gutta
Tawny Cypress	Allisa
Jeanine Ramirez	Reporter
Rosalyn Coleman	Crying Mother
Paul Diomede	Arguing Man
Diana Bologna	Arguing Woman

Technical Credits

Brad Caleb Kane

Michael C. Martin

Antoine Fuqua	Director,Executive Producer
LuAnn Claps	Makeup
Elie Cohn	Producer
Suzanne Smith Crowley	Casting
Boaz Davidson	Executive Producer
Therese DePrez	Production Designer
Danny Dimbort	Executive Producer
Robert Greenhut	Executive Producer
John Houlihan	Musical Direction/Supervision
Basil Iwanyk	Producer
Brad Caleb Kane	Screenwriter
Jesse Kennedy	Executive Producer
John Langley	Producer
Avi Lerner	Executive Producer
Michael C. Martin	Screenwriter
Patrick Murguia	Cinematographer
Joe Napolitano	Asst. Director,Co-producer
Jeanne O'Brien	Associate Producer
Juliet Polcsa	Costumes/Costume Designer
Kat Samick	Co-producer
Maurice Shell	Sound/Sound Designer
Trevor Short	Executive Producer
John Thompson	Producer
Barbara Tulliver	Editor
Mary Vernieu	Casting
Mary Viola	Executive Producer
Marco Weber	Executive Producer
Joe White	Sound Mixer
Marcelo Zarvos	Score Composer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Brooklyn's Finest
1. Main Title/Righter & Wronger [4:47]
2. Imperfect Creatures [7:00]
3. One More Week [7:30]
4. Taking It Home [7:01]
5. On the Outside [5:32]
6. "What Do You See When You Look At Me? [7:56]
7. Drug Raid [4:22]
8. One Lousy Thing [10:53]
9. Crack In the Veneer [15:10]
10. A Ghost & A Legend [7:36]
11. Face to Face [6:11]
12. Expiration Dates [7:43]
13. Convergence [6:07]
14. BK Houses [6:46]
15. A Ghost In the Night [15:33]
16. End Credits [5:45]

Menu

Disc #1 -- Brooklyn's Finest
   Play
   Set Up
      Audio
         English Dolby Digital 5.1
         Audio Commentary With Director Antoine Fuqua
      Subtitles
         English For the Deaf & Hearing Impaired
         Spanish
         Subtitles: None
   Scene Selections
   Special Features
      Featurettes
         Play All
         Chaos & Conflict: The Life of a New York Cop
         Boyz N the Real Hood
         An Eye For Detail: Director Featurette
         From the MTA to the WGA: Writer Featurette
      Deleted Scenes
      Theatrical Trailer
      Also On DVD
         Spartacus
         The Crazies
         Pandorum
         Law Abiding Citizen
         Ultimate Fighting Championship

Editorial Reviews

In Brooklyn's Finest, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) paints a brutal picture of the volatile world of one of New York City's most dangerous precincts, where law meets crime and the line between right and wrong is blurred. The film follows the lives of three conflicted New York City police officers as they navigate the seedy underbelly of a rough area of Brooklyn plagued by drugs, prostitution, and corruption. Burned-out veteran Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), days from his retirement, just wants to take his pension and move to a fishing cabin in Connecticut. Narcotics officer Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke) finds that there's no line he won't cross to provide his family with a better life and save his long-suffering pregnant wife and kids from squaller. Clarence "Tango" Butler (Don Cheadle) has been undercover so long he fears he may never crawl out of the dark hole he's burrowed himself into. With pressure bearing down on them, each man faces daily tests of judgment, loyalty, and morality in one of the city's most dangerous professions. Brooklyn's Finest is reminiscent of similar cop dramas such as Serpico, New Jack City, and even HBO's The Wire (though not as brilliant), and for a while the film starts off as a promising crime drama about three police officers driven to extremes in order to do their job. Fuqua brings the same kind of soulful intensity and gritty realism that characterized his previous inner-city tale Training Day, but this time abandons the simplicity for a more complex and claustrophobic narrative filled with tortured souls. Where Brooklyn's Finest falters is in the script, written by first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin. As gritty cop dramas go, Martin does an OK job of hitting all the major plot points, but as the film moves inexorably toward its climax, where the three storylines finally intersect, it feels more or less out of necessity than inevitability that they converge and leaves the audience to wonder why they were all part of the same movie in the first place. What saves the film from being just another mediocre cop movie are the performances from an all-star cast. Hawke is convincing as the cash-strapped, twitchy family man just desperate enough to steal drug money. With his grizzled demeanor and brooding mentality, Hawke brings just enough suspense to make the audience wonder will he or won't he. Cheadle is surprisingly convincing as conflicted undercover police officer Tango. He wants to get out of the world he's entrenched in and live the dream with a comfy desk job, but his loyalties have started to shift from his fellow police officers to the drug dealers he now sees as family. The most interesting relationship in the film is between Tango and Caz (played by Wesley Snipes), who formed a bond while in prison (Tango was undercover) and carried that brotherhood to the streets. Snipes turns in a solid performance as the formerly incarcerated drug kingpin who wants to score one last time and disappear from his old life, and it's delightful to see Cheadle and Snipes play off each other. The weakest storyline of the film, however, is that of alcoholic veteran Eddie, and though Gere consciously makes an effort to portray a man whose lack of enthusiasm for each day is evident, that listlessness translates to his performance and leaves the audience to wonder whether the film would be better off without him. The supporting cast includes a cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio as a shifty corrupt cop and Ellen Barkin as a foul-mouthed FBI agent, whose performance is completely unexpected but definitely welcome. Brooklyn's Finest isn't the greatest cop drama. At its best it's a character-driven story of desperate men doing desperate things in desperate situations; at its worst, however, it reveals itself as a film riddled with clichés and happenstance.

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