Pride and Glory Review

There have been so many films made about the NYPD that it's almost a genre in it's own right. "Pride and Glory" fits in comfortably here.

Last year it was Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg in "We Own the Night" this year in "Pride and Glory" it's Edward Norton and Colin Farrell working on the mean streets of New York. Norton's Ray Tierney comes from a proud family of New York cops, headed up by father Francis (Jon Voight) who holds his ideals so high that he's blind to the corruption that surrounds him. While Ray is one of the good guys his brother in law Jimmy Egan (Farrell) is as rotten as they come. Jimmy manages to hide this from his precious family until a drug bust ends in tragedy and sparks an investigation that leads back to his precinct. Ray's older brother Francis Jr. (Noah Emmerich) is Jimmy's boss and when the evidence stacks up he is faced with the choice of tearing his family apart or doing the right thing. To add to this tortured dilemma his wife (Jennifer Ehle) is dying of cancer. As the pressure starts to intensify for Jimmy, his wife (Lake Bell) begins to notice that something isn't right and begins to wonder how well she knows the father of her children.

This is a tale of honour and loyalty, and how one man's idea of doing the right thing can be the opposite of his brothers. The performances here are solid but the whole film smacks so much of déjà vu that it hardly matters. Yes it is edgy, gritty and one violent scene in particular featuring a baby and a steam iron verges on original but the cringe factor is just too high to applaud it. The tension in the plot is lost somewhere in the middle and bogged down in the sentimentality of the family involved. Is this a melodrama or a cop thriller? Trying to be both of those things, means it doesn't really succeed at being either.