Brooklyn’s Finest (2009/Anchor Bay Blu-ray + DVD) + Caught In The Crossfire (2010/Lionsgate
Blu-ray)
Picture:
B & C+/C+ Sound: B-/C+ Extras: B-/D Films: B-/D
When it
comes to doing films about urban crime, you either make a film that is ambitious
and can be believed or an exploitive piece of junk that is condescending, badly
acted, hates its audience and has a built-in set of stereotypes to it. Two new releases are perfect examples with
Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest
(2009) the ambitious film and Brian Miller’s Caught In The Crossfire (2010)
the mess.
It’s been
eight years since Fuqua made Training
Day (reviewed elsewhere on this site) which is pretty much his commercial
and critical peak to date, so after a series of duds like King Arthur and failed franchise film Shooter, he is back in his element with Brooklyn’s Finest, a multi-character tale of crime that blurs the
line between the police, criminals and the increasingly violent society they
battle in.
Ethan
Hawke is back as a different cop than the one he played in Training Day, in an interesting opening scene with the great
Vincent D’Onofrio. From there, we slowly
delve into the various lives of those we meet, including a self-destructive cop
on the brink of retirement (Richard Geer), a peculiar criminal (Don Cheadle)
getting together with an old friend (Wesley Snipes) who is also a major
criminal and Ellen Barkin as a tough cop with a major attitude problem.
There is
a solid cast all around as the plot thickens and Michael C. Martin (TV’s Sleeper Cell) delivers a script that is
rich in character, but he and Fuqua cannot bring it to its highest heights and
that is where the film gets into trouble towards the end. For a film that wants to be a hardcore
contender in the urban crime New York School of Filmmaking, it pulls back in
the end in some ways that once again show the bad effects of a film like Crash as well as their inability to
grasp what makes Robert Altman’s films work.
That puts the film behind similar, better, more realized works by Martin
Scorsese, Sidney Lumet and Spike Lee.
However,
when the actors are on, they are great to watch, with Snipes, Gere and Barkin
giving some of the best performances of their careers and reminding us of how
great they can be at the peak of their acting powers. Cheadle, Hawke, Will Patton, Lela Rochon
(underused) and a supporting cast of strong unknowns make this very watchable
as the performances roll over flaws within the narrative.
Fuqua is
a good director, but not a great one. It
is hard to tell why, but he gets boxed into certain areas that limit his
ability to breakout as an auteur and really deliver an outright classic. Maybe if he made film in the 1970s, it would
be somehow easier and when he leaves this genre, he seems to be lost and cannot
integrate into those other worlds. If
we’re lucky, he’ll find this a key transitional work. If not, it will be another exception to his
filmography.
After Caught
In The Crossfire, Director Brian Miller will be lucky if he ever acquires
any kind of filmography. Condescending,
tired, dumb, clichéd, stereotypical, laughable and flat out bad, Chris Klein
(no wonder this was his last stop before alcohol rehab), Adam Rodriguez and
rapper trying to b an actor Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) play a trio of police
investigators who are no the best at doing their job, are not funny, are more
inept than the Keystone Kops and give crime fighting a very, very, very bad
name.
This
pathetic train wreck also gives us a blurred line between who is with the
police and who is against them, including someone (or persons) who are
traitors. However, the whole miserable
85 minutes betray anyone watching it and Klein seems really out of it, while Jackson thinks smiling
and mugging equal acting. So much for
keeping it real.
If it
were any funnier, it could have been a camp classic, but it is not even good
enough to be unintentionally funny and the gunplay trivializes firearms like
the script trivializes anything resembling thinking. I heard this was really bad, but uggghhhh, seeing is believing.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image looks pretty good throughout on Finest with nice color reproduction,
some stylizing that holds back fidelity, some good depth, detail and a complex
lighting approach by Director of Photography Patrick Murguia that helps the
narrative move shot in 35mm (mostly Super 35mm with some anamorphic Panavision
35mm). The anamorphically enhanced DVD is
fair, but cannot compete with the Blu-ray and cannot capture the more complex
nature of the shoot. The 1080p 1.78 X 1
digital High Definition image on Caught
is soft, noisy and lame, as if it were a low-budget TV movie, pre-High
Definition. Color and depth also suffer
throughout.
Each Blu-ray
has a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix and both have problems. As was the case with King Arthur, another Fuqua sound mix has gone wrong, though in that
case, part of the problem was editing out R-rated sounds. Besides not having the control of the film he
should, issues have extended to the sound which has a soundfield that goes in
and out due to irregular changes in the mixing.
The Dolby Digital on the DVD is the same, but weaker, but there are
still some good surround moments, which is more than I can say for the DTS-MA
on Caught which shows just how
low-budget this really is. You even get
sound issues with dialogue that should not be in any major release at this
point. Wow, is it bad.
Extras on
both include Deleted Scenes/Outtakes and Trailers, while Finest adds the Three Cops
& A Dealer character profiles, feature length audio commentary by Fuqua
that should only be heard after watching the film and four more featurettes,
including Chaos & Conflict: The Life
Of A New York Cop, Boyz In The Real Hood, An Eye For Detail director’s
featurette and From The MTA To The WGA writer featurette. The Blu-ray of Finest adds Digital Copy for
PC and PC portable devices.
- Nicholas Sheffo
