Pride and Glory

Good cop vs. Bad cop movies are a dime a dozen these days. Just a month ago we had one called Righteous Kill. The differences between the good cop movies and the bad cop movies are so sometimes so subtle that you cannot always think of exactly what made one specific one better than another one. All of the stories are somewhat derivative of each other, but whether it is the writing or the acting some just turn out better. Righteous Kill suffered from a myriad of problems, which was sad given the two leads are a pair of the best living actors we have. Pride and Glory (Which sound like the title of a war movie) has Edward Norton, who is considered a great talent and Colin Farrell, who is not considered a great talent. If Righteous Kill had two of the best and Pride and Glory only has one great one, does it even stand a chance?

We open on a football game, but it is quickly over and the movie quickly, intensely and dizzyingly jumps to the scene of a shoot out. 4 cops are dead and a few low level criminals are dead too. Someone got away. The police put a task force together and it is to be led by Ray Tierney(Norton). he does not want it at all because he is still on edge over something that happened months ago that left him with a scar on his cheek. However, it is the squad of his brother, Francis(Noah Emmerich) that got hit and the dead men were under the watch of Ray's brother-in-law, Jimmy(Colin Farrell) and Ray's alcoholic father, Francis senior(Jon Voight) has begged him to. Unfortunately, the reveal of Jimmy being actually guilty is ruined by the trailer, but from there this movie becomes not only a race of family and cop vs. cop, but towards the end, the scope of the picture gets much bigger as to include an almost riot over cop's treatment of a minority. Ray must figure out exactly what was happening and who knew about it, all the while confronting his own demons of a former bust gone wrong and dealings with his soon to be ex-wife. Francis meanwhile, is not really guilty, but feels guilty and is also dealing with a cancer stricken wife, Abby (Jennifer Ehle).

So, now we come back to that fine line between good cop movie and bad cop movie. Pride and Glory has all of the cliches of the cop movie and much of the dialog you'd expect from such a movie, so for all intents and purposes, it should not work. Yet, there is something fully engrossing about the whole thing. Pride and Glory strips itself of all the shine and polish on so many movies these days and gets to something down and dirty. The camera moves a little too much in the fashion of a Cops episode, Robbie stay away, but when the camera focuses and zooms in for extreme close ups of Edward Norton's damaged cheek and dead eyes, the movie sparkles. Not only does the movie sparkle but it cracks with fire and a frenzied intensity that is slowly boiling under the surface and then unleashes in the final act as consecutive scenes see a shooting, a fight, a near riot and then ultimately a blood bath of sorts. Through it all, director Gavin O' Connor finds a way to make it seem fresh, even when we know it is not. It is not an easy thing to do, just ask Jon Avnet (IMDB him). O' Connor is a confident, interesting director who is not as interested in telling the story of a good guy and a bad guy, but the story of two men doing what they think they have to do in order to survive. Norton's character is our moral center, but that is shaken when we realize he may have done something very bad at one point. At that point we are not sure what we can trust.

Speaking of trust, I think it is safe to say I can trust Colin Farrell and his acting choices again. Sure, he had a rough patch where he was doing his pretty boy thing, but this year he has redeemed himself. First he was in the savagely funny In Bruges and now, he is truly riveting as a New York City police officer who not only puts his personal gains over his oath and duty, he puts it over life and truth. There is a scene involving a baby and an iron that is about as crazy as I could expect from such a movie and Farrell never backs down from any of it. He is down in the dirt, using that Irish dialect to his full advantage. I am not sure how often Colin Farrell can be the villain, but he seems more at home in it. He is better suited and he and Norton spark a fire in their confrontation scene. They do not have many scenes together, but when they get together, it is a barn burner and we are all invited to watch. Another man worth mentioning is Noah Emmerich. He has done some pretty great work in his career, especially Little Children, but here he gets his shot to play with the big dogs and he does not disappoint. He is the most sympathetic character because he didn't do anything wrong, but he may have allowed some of it, and his wife is slowly dying. The scenes with his wife are the kinds of scenes the bad cop movies don't have.

Is Pride and Glory the most original or innovative movie ever? No, of course not. It takes what we know as familiar and does something interesting to it. I was hooked from the moment the movie took off until it finally closed. The turns it takes are curious and often offer us a point of view we may not have figured on. Instead of making Jimmy's crew a bunch of nothings, we spend a little time with them, therefore it gives a sense of meaning when they endanger themselves as greed takes hold. When you start to supplement your income with extra stolen money, you cannot always go back to how it was before, even if you want to. The hold is just too much and we see that in this film. Gavin O' Conor may rely a bit too much on the shaky camera thing that is so popular, but when he finally focuses on something, he always seems to be capturing the exact thing he was meant to catch and we were meant to see? Can we really ask much more than that?

Final Grade: A-