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The opening scene shows two men sitting in a parked car having a conversation, the man in the drivers seat, Carlo ([[Vincent D'Onofrio]]) is then shot unexpectedly in the face by the passenger (revealed to be Sal) who then robs Carlo and runs off.
The opening scene shows two men sitting in a parked car having a conversation, the man in the drivers seat, Carlo ([[Vincent D'Onofrio]]) is then shot unexpectedly in the face by the passenger (revealed to be Sal) who then robs Carlo and runs off.


Detective Salvatore "Sal" Procida ([[Ethan Hawke]]), desperate for money to feed and house his rapidly growing family, has started pocketing the money left on the table during drug raids. Deeply religious, he finds that he is in the bad place of trying to reconcile his misdeeds with his needs. The mold in the walls of his home is making his wife ([[Lili Taylor]]) ill and endangering the life of his unborn twins. And the down payment on his coveted new, bigger house is past due.
Detective Salvatore "Sal" Procida ([[Ethan Hawke]]), desperate for money to feed and house his rapidly growing family, has started pocketing the money left on the table during drug raids. Deeply religious, he finds that he is in the bad place of trying to reconcile his misdeeds with his needs. The mould in the walls of his home is making his wife ([[Lili Taylor]]) ill and endangering the life of his unborn twins. And the down payment on his coveted new, bigger house is past due.


Officer Eddie Dugan ([[Richard Gere]]) is a week from retirement after twenty-two years of less-than-exemplary service to the force when he is assigned to oversee rookies in the tough neighborhoods. His life in shambles, Eddie is barely hanging on, swilling whiskey in the morning to get out of bed. His only friend is a prostitute he frequents.
Officer Eddie Dugan ([[Richard Gere]]) is a week from retirement after twenty-two years of less-than-exemplary service to the force when he is assigned to oversee rookies in the tough neighborhoods. His life in shambles, Eddie is barely hanging on, swilling whiskey in the morning to get out of bed. His only friend is a prostitute he frequents.

Revision as of 17:56, 7 July 2010

Brooklyn's Finest
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAntoine Fuqua
Written byMichael C. Martin
Produced byBasil Iwanyk
John Langley
John Thompson
Elie Cohn
StarringRichard Gere
Don Cheadle
Ethan Hawke
Wesley Snipes
CinematographyPatrick Murguia
Edited byBarbara Tulliver
Music byMarcelo Zarvos
Production
companies
Millenium Films
Thunder Road Film Productions
Nu Image
Distributed byOverture Films
Release dates
January 16, 2009 (2009-01-16) (SFF)
September 8, 2009 (VFF)
March 5, 2010
Running time
132 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$17 million[1]
Box office$34,781,897

Brooklyn's Finest is a 2010 American crime film starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Wesley Snipes. It is directed by Antoine Fuqua, and written by Michael C. Martin, a one-time subway flagger from East New York.[2] The film was released in North America on March 5, 2010.

Plot

The film takes place within the notoriously rough Brownsville section of Brooklyn and especially within the Van Dyke housing projects in the NYPD's 65th precinct. Three policemen struggle with the sometimes fine line between right and wrong.

The opening scene shows two men sitting in a parked car having a conversation, the man in the drivers seat, Carlo (Vincent D'Onofrio) is then shot unexpectedly in the face by the passenger (revealed to be Sal) who then robs Carlo and runs off.

Detective Salvatore "Sal" Procida (Ethan Hawke), desperate for money to feed and house his rapidly growing family, has started pocketing the money left on the table during drug raids. Deeply religious, he finds that he is in the bad place of trying to reconcile his misdeeds with his needs. The mould in the walls of his home is making his wife (Lili Taylor) ill and endangering the life of his unborn twins. And the down payment on his coveted new, bigger house is past due.

Officer Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere) is a week from retirement after twenty-two years of less-than-exemplary service to the force when he is assigned to oversee rookies in the tough neighborhoods. His life in shambles, Eddie is barely hanging on, swilling whiskey in the morning to get out of bed. His only friend is a prostitute he frequents.

Detective Clarence "Tango" Butler (Don Cheadle) is an undercover cop working the drug beat. But he tires of the kind of attention that a black man in a black car attracts, and he has been begging for a promotion and a desk job for years. He is finally offered a way out and it means betraying a close friend Caz, a known criminal (Wesley Snipes) recently released from federal prison.

Federal Agent Smith (Ellen Barkin) instructs Tango to set up the drug deal that will assure Caz's arrest and return to federal prison. Eddie's first rookie assignment (Logan Marshall-Green) is a former Marine, who becomes disgusted with Eddie's lack of professionalism, and asks to be reassigned - only to be killed on his next assignment. Eddie's second rookie assignment (Jesse Williams) accidentally fires his gun near a teenager during a petty theft investigation causing him to go deaf, leaving the NYPD facing a public relations nightmare. During the investigation, Eddie is remorseful for what happened, and is upset that he didn't stay in the store, but refuses to play along with his superiors' attempts to imply that the teenager was a drug dealer.

Sal's wife goes into the hospital after an asthma attack. The doctor says that the attack was caused by wood mold, which is in Sal's home. Sal becomes more stressed at this news.

When Tango goes to warn Caz to abort their upcoming drug deal, they are ambushed and Caz is shot dead on the street, under orders from Red (Michael K. Williams), a gangster Caz had humiliated earlier in a rooftop incident. Eddie turns in his badge and visits his regular hooker, Chantal (Shannon Kane), who does not want to change her life by moving with him to Connecticut. After Agent Smith remarks that Caz's death is better than his arrest, Tango lunges at her, but is restrained by fellow agents. Tango determines to avenge Caz's death now that he knows Red ordered the hit.

That night within the Van Dyke housing projects, Eddie, Tango, and Sal converge for very different reasons. After leaving his friend and partner, Detective Ronny Rosario (Brían F. O'Byrne), Sal, alone, raids the apartment of a drug informant. After killing three of the informant's entourage and finding their stockpile of cash, Sal is shot in the back and killed by a thug who saw Sal enter the building. Meanwhile, Eddie, overcoming the urge to commit suicide, rescues a missing person (Sarah Thompson) from a basement operated sex-slave dungeon. Eddie apprehends one of the men, and is confronted by a second. Eddie instructs the second man to get down, but is attacked. Eddie shoots the man in the chest, and a fight ensues. Tango gets his vengeance from Red, but then is mistaken for a gangster and is shot dead in the street by Rosario. Only after shooting and killing Tango does Rosario realize he has shot another law officer. Rosario, still determined to stop Sal, is forced to continue his search for him, yet is further devastated when he finds the body of Sal in the drug dealer's apartment.

The closing scene shows Eddie having rescued the three missing girls, and in the process having redeemed himself from the reputation he earned within the precinct of being a failure as an officer.

Cast

Production

The film was filmed in three boroughs in New York City: Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, locations included Brownsville and there, among others, the Van Dyke Houses. In Queens, locations included Rego Park.[2] Michael Martin's script originally took place primarily in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, which were near where the writer grew up and where a couple of his friends grew up.[3]

The total budget for the film was in the $17 million range, and many of the actors took large pay cuts to make the movie.[2]

Writer

Michael C. Martin, the writer of the screenplay, went to South Shore High School, where a film appreciation course sparked his interest and an ACL injury derailed a possible future basketball career. He went on to study film at Brooklyn College. He originally wrote the Finest script for a screenwriter's contest after having been injured in a car accident in 2005. He didn't win the contest but his second prize included a subscription to the IFP newsletter. The script also continued to gain attention. Martin found an agent, interest in him writing a New Jack City sequel, and, finally, interest in making the film of the original script. Martin was paid $200,000 for the script.[2]

In an interview at the time of the movie's release, Martin detailed the development of the film: "Jeanne O’Brien-Ebiri and Mary Viola are responsible for getting this movie made. Jeanne was the first person in the industry to read the script and she was responsible for getting me an agent and the staff job (as a staff writer on the Showtime series Sleeper Cell). And once the script was out there, it came across Mary Viola’s desk at Thunder Road as a writing sample for New Jack City 2. Mary, a native New Yorker, worked like hell to sell it to the head of Thunder Road, Basil Iwanyk. Basil was an executive on Training Day, he had a great relationship with Antoine. And once Antoine attached himself to the script ... Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, and Ethan Hawke followed. Within weeks it received a greenlight." By way of inspirations for the Finest script, Martin named three Italian neorealism films -- Nights of Cabiria, Umberto D., and The Bicycle Thief -- and two directors, Vittorio De Sica who directed Umberto and Thief among others, and Jim Jarmusch. Also in the interview, Martin identified his South Shore film teacher as Mr. Braun.[3][4]

Release

Brooklyn's Finest premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009, and was picked up by Senator Distribution with a price "in the low seven figures".[5] Due to some financial distress, Senator Distribution wasn't able to fund its release in 2009.[6] The film was sold again to Overture Films at the Venice Film Festival in September,[6] and was released in North America on March 5, 2010.

Critical reception

The film was met with mixed reviews. It currently holds a 43% approval rating based on 127 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 5.4/10.[7] The film also received a weighted average score of 43% at Metacritic, based on 33 reviews from mainstream critics.[8]

In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, concluding that "The film has a basic strength in its performances and craft, but falls short of the high mark Fuqua obviously set for himself."[9] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the actors for "bringing dimension to these stock characters", but criticized the film for being "a melodrama about three cliches in search of a bloodbath."[10] A. O. Scott of the New York Times also gave the film a mixed review, stating that "the sheer charismatic force of much of the acting keeps you in the movie", but "Mr. Fuqua and Mr. Martin dig themselves into a pulpy predicament, and then find themselves unable to do anything but shoot their way out."[11] The Los Angeles Times reviewer commented that "Brooklyn's Finest is an old-style potboiler about desperate cops in dire straits that overcooks both its story and its stars."[12]

Box office

In its debut weekend in the United States, Brooklyn's Finest opened at #2 behind ‎Alice in Wonderland with $13,350,299 in 1,936 theaters, averaging $6,896 per theater.[13][1] As of May 30, 2010, the film has grossed $27,163,593 in the United States theatrically,[1] - a good result for its United States distributor Overture Films which paid less than $3 million to acquire this film's United States rights.[14] The film also grossed $34,781,897 in theaters worldwide,[1] and achieved an eleventh-place on a "Cop - Dirty" genre ranking, 1973–Present.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Brooklyn's Finest (2010) – Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
  2. ^ a b c d Lee, Trymaine (2008-08-10). "Brooklyn to Hollywood: That's Some Subway Ride". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-02-08. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  3. ^ a b "Q&A with Brooklyn's Fines screenwriter Michael C. Martin" Interview by Scott Myers, March 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
  4. ^ Aaron Braun page at RateMyTeacher.com. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
  5. ^ Cieply, Michael (2009-01-26). "Movies Sell Slowly at Sundance". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-02-04. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. ^ a b "Fuqua's 'Finest' to Overture". Variety. Retrieved 2010-02-04. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ "Brooklyn's Finest Movie Reviews – Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 2010-06-20.
  8. ^ "Brooklyn's Finest reviews at Metacritic.com". Metacritic. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-03-06.
  9. ^ Roger Ebert (2010-03-03). "Brooklyn's Finest :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
  10. ^ Mick LaSalle (2010-03-04). "Review: Cliches handcuff 'Brooklyn's Finest'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
  11. ^ A. O. Scott (2010-03-05). "Movie Review - Brooklyn's Finest - NYTimes.com". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
  12. ^ Betsy Sharkey (2010-03-05). "Review: 'Brooklyn's Finest' - latimes.com". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-03-05.
  13. ^ "Weekend Report: Moviegoers Mad About 'Alice' - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 20 June 2010.
  14. ^ "Overture Box-Office Profits: $50M-$60M". TheWrap.com. Retrieved 20 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Text "TheWrap.com" ignored (help)
  15. ^ "Cop - Dirty Movies at the Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-04-16.
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