"Pride and Glory" (2008) - Movie Review

“Pride and Glory” has excess of characters and less of screen time of main cast which makes it what could have been a good cop drama and thriller. It tries to carry the righteousness and the hesitation to execute it of what “Gone, Baby, Gone” and “Mystic River” had but does not capitalize it. It garners with star cast of Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Noah Emmerich along with a splendid supporting role by Jon Voight. It stayed on the radar of good movie until the bar fight scene that took it off immediately from the turf.

Tierney’s are a family of cops. Francis Sr. (Jon Voight) with his sons Francis Jr. (Noah Emmerich), Ray (Edward Norton) and son in law Jimmy (Colin Farrell) have given themselves to the department all through the years. A bad shoot out takes the lives of four cops under the wings of Francis Jr. who were fellow men of Jimmy. Ray is asked to come in for the investigation after a two year hiatus from the field assignments by request of daddy and he finds something more as expected on his brother in law Jimmy. This should have been the plot alone for satiating their appetite for the whole film. Instead the focus shifts from one to another randomly enough to see the side stories, sub plots and characters we come not to care about.

There is a Christmas lunch sequence when Voight in his Francis Sr. is little bit drunk and prides on his family. That tells what pulled every one into this film. It gave the same amazed and wondered effect over me by the performance of Voight as he did in “Runaway Train”. That is the actor and the character to be there in flesh and blood to this story giving himself everything he has to it. At the same time it is marvelous to see how the others let in that performance sink in to the screen. There is the plot and there is the drama and there is the film. The moment gets lost and it is a shame to lose it.

Slated actually to be released early 2008 I believe for reasons of market strategy by New Line this late. To be fair to the review, I have been expecting this film for a while and when it got pushed back I was little disappointed. And by the time I went in to the theatre I have come to loosen those expectations and see a clean slated film. I begin to like it when started and in fact the way the camera is always kept as looking over one’s shoulder keeps us attentive on the minimal face time we are allowed upon. Norton as usual takes in the character as seriously as Voight does and so is every one. But that is the sadness of it when the actors are bamboozled by the screenplay. I can see how individually every scene would have been greatly directed by Gavin O’Connor but when putting it together by a screenplay, it got to know the heart of it. It is a family of breathing cops in line of the right thing to do. It had been done but there will be novel way to do it again and again with freshness and originality.

The side stories felt unnecessary and the actors doing it obviously take the emotional level quite serious which makes us become confused. Does the director want us to sympathize with these cops who get hooked to this dealing of criminals for money? The character of Jimmy we see when separated from the family circumstances portrays a psychopath who can stoop to horrendous level for getting him protected. When he gives himself up in the end, is that his atonement? There is no doubt that in this routine cop film there lies a good film but it does not gets it foot on right place to stand tall.

One of the greatest cop drama ever made would be “Serpico”. The morality grays out when the risk each cop puts up in front of him/her to guard the city. That morality is also used when one bad cop gets his hand dirty with the criminals to wipe it off at the cost of collateral damages. Amongst these deadly crimes and unfathomable acts of inhumanity, the protector of the law is the one who is put under magnifying glass of each steps as her/his side stepping would be fatal to the entire system. “Serpico” and many other cop films did that and the family intertwining has been dealt too in this ordeal. “Pride and Glory” should have had more focus on those back stories concentrating what those classic films did than on the accomplices of Jimmy.