Brooklyn’s Finest

Despite decent performances from Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere and Don Cheadle, director Antoine Fuqua has made a movie that lacks authenticity. It’s as if three typical scripts about New York cops were shortened and combined to make one big cliché of a movie. Hawke plays a cop fighting the temptation to go on the take, Gere plays a cop near retirement who hasn’t liked the job very much, and Cheadle plays the undercover guy who might be getting too close to the criminals he’s trying to catch. While the film is never anything near terrible, it doesn’t possess a single moment that feels unique. Hawke delivers perhaps the best performance in the film, sort of the flipside to the virtuous cop he played in Fuqua’s Training Day. He works his butt off, but the movie lets him down.