Pride and Glory

Pride and Glory

Josh Pothen

1.5 stars out of 4

This piece was originally published at the ODU Mace & Crown and is reprinted below.

“Pride and Glory” is a movie so bad that I must use two analogies to describe it. It is like eating a malformed cake. All the familiar ingredients are present, but something has gone wrong with the cooking. It is also like looking at an unkempt beard. It is so unfocused, ugly and long that all you want is to shave it off completely.

If there is a saving grace to the movie, it is the acting. Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight all star as members of a family of New York cops, each with a different personality and way of dealing with the law. They’re so believable that even when they can’t win against the screenplay, we’re reminded of how talented they are.

The plot involves a drug bust in which four of the family’s friends in the force are killed. The main outline of events of the movie are clear, but the individual brushstrokes seem confused. Part of this may the editing, which more than once makes it seem as if certain conversations have had parts cut out of them. Another part is the screenplay. There are many people in this film, from individual policemen to members of the family. Most are not given enough screen time or dialogue. One particular missed opportunity is a family Christmas dinner, where music plays over a good part of the conversation, preventing us from hearing what they’re saying. This prevents us from connecting with the characters, or even learning to differentiate them. At one point, I thought one character was merely another one wearing a wig.

What’s surprising is how many tired cliches are thrown in to accentuate the story. The dying wife. The alcoholic father. Lines like “I’m doing the best I can”. And I haven’t even mentioned cliches that could spoil the movie, though you will know what they are if you have seen any police thriller before. There are two original ideas in the movie, but you know you’re in trouble when one involves attempting to brand a baby with an iron, and the other involves a one-on-one fistfight in a bar set to (I kid you not) Irish dance music. At the climax of the drama of the film.

The result is that the story is devoid of interest, and we sit back unmoved and uninterested. The film partially redeems itself towards the end with an intense argument between family members that feels true. Then it descends into ridiculousness with some inexplicable developments.

The film closes with the longest disclaimer I have ever seen, assuring the audience that the people, story and situations are not based on anything real. What a pity. Truth, after all, is stranger than fiction. “Pride and Glory” is a film desperately in need more more truth.

Street Kings

Rating: 1 star out of 4

What reason is there to see “Street Kings”? The ads promise a fun ride where we watch cops use power for fun and pleasures of which we must only dream. Yet the actual movie is dark, joyless and surprisingly depressing, making us feel sad and angry when it’s over. Caveat emptor indeed.

The movie stars Keanu Reeves as a corrupt LAPD officer named Tom Ludlow. It took me thirty minutes into the movie before I learned his name. Consider that the great screenwriter William Goldman said that the first fifteen minutes were the most important to establishing the story, and you get an idea of the sophistication of the writing.

An idealistic cop named Washington (Terry Crews) exposes the rampant corruption in the LAPD to the Internal Affairs department. Ludlow follows Washington one day into a convenience store to beat him up, only to watch two masked robbers gun down Washington mercilessly. Ludlow’s superiors urge him to drop the investigation so he won’t get implicated, but he continues searching anyway to find the criminals. I’m not sure why, but then again, this is a movie that does characterization by showing Ludlow drinking vodka.

The film spends most of its time in the details of Ludlow’s investigation, which involves a great deal of information. Frankly, I became increasingly indifferent. There are only so many revelations that can be made on the basis of cardboard characters before we stop caring and let everything wash over us, knowing that the ending explanation will come eventually.

My indifference was not helped by Reeve’s performance, who remains in the same dazed emotional state through all of the movie, even when he’s supposedly happy. Early on, he’s accused of being racist, to which he responds that yes, he is racist because he arrests all minority criminals but gives all the white ones a ride home. His delivery makes it impossible to tell whether he is serious or just kidding.

But I also felt an increasing level of disgust in my stomach and my head as the movie progressed. There are gunfights, interrogations, and chase scenes throughout, but they feel uninspired, and worse, unexciting and grim. At one point the cops unearth two decomposed bodies, and when they finish their work, the camera gives us a close-up of the corpses before cutting to the next scene. Is this supposed to be entertaining? Why show us such sights for the sake of showing them?

And then there is the sheer incompetence of the storytelling. Early on, Ludlow learns that Washington’s body had three different caliber bullets it, even though he was supposedly only shot by two different guns. As I walked out of the theater, I still didn’t understand where that third caliber came from, and if I understood the movie correctly, I don’t know how or why the bad guys would have put it in Washington. At another point, a character tears apart a house wall and finds the insides stuffed with large sums of money. Couldn’t that particular suspect afford a secret bank account?

The only redeeming elements are the two police captains played by Forest Whitaker and Hugh Laurie. Both are written and acted as believable policeman with principles that come into full view at the end. But the movie backs away from them, wanting instead to focus on the other characters and the story, which grows increasingly dark. There’s a message here about how no cop is completely clean, and that good cops need bad cops in order to uphold the law. Sure, that’s a depressing message, but it’s even more depressing to see it argued in such a shoddy way. Time is simply too valuable to watch such brainless cynicism.