Filled with every cop-movie convention since the invention of gunpowder and curse words, Brooklyn's Finest is three movies in one, all of which you've seen before: the sad tale of the sullen burnout a week away from retirement who finds accidental redemption (Richard Gere as Eddie); the tortured tale of the undercover brother named Tango, who's asked to do one last bad thing before he's kicked upstairs and out of the down-low life (Don Cheadle); and the tragic tale of the good-ish cop gone bad (Ethan Hawke as Sal), saddled with a mess of kids and seeing nothing wrong with pilfering drug dough to finance a new life for his pregnant-again wife. Seen it. Seen it. And seen it. Brooklyn's Finest is from Antoine Fuqua, who directed Denzel Washington right into an Oscar for Training Day. The script, by a first-timer named Michael C. Martin, would be forgivable if Fuqua had tweaked it enough to at least acknowledge its antecedents. And Hawke, who spends a lot of time glowering and sulking, usually while smoking, is easily the least Sal-looking character in the history of the movies.
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