Westside Steve Posted November 2, 2008 Report Share Posted November 2, 2008 Pride and Glory New Line R 129 min Friends, I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time, as there hasn’t been a really good cop film in a while. I’ll grant you that good cop films are hard to make because even though I’m a fan of the genre, options are limited. First you need cops. Second you need bad guys. The idea is to get to where one wins and enough cool turns to keep me awake while you get there. Simple enough right? Well PRIDE AND GLORY does have its share of good ingredients. It’s basically a story of a family of tough Irish-American city police loyal to each other and loyal to the force. There’s a great cast. Edward Norton as burned out and too-honest Ray. John Voight is top notch as his drunken father Frances. His boozy dinner table toast should be on an actors highlight reel. He talks Ray into investigating the murder of four officers. Noah Emmerich is Frances Jr. and Colin Ferrell is the shady brother in law. As it turns out there’s been some of the usual cutting legal corners, intimidation, bribes and plain old looking the other way going on. No big deal but when four cops wind up dead everyone faces the fact that it’s gone too far. There seems to be an easy way out but nobody can come to grips with even one more deception. Writer/director Gavin O’Connor follows the grand Irish tradition of literary excess, whiskey, enough F bombs to make Mamet blush and almost O’Neill-esque constant angst. I’m embarrassed in my Guinness stained heart to admit it was a little (just a little) too much. There’s actually more wailing and gnashing of teeth than story, though not enough to ruin it. I just think it fell just a tad short of my expectations. Still it’s gritty and powerful and I’ll be looking forward to O Connor’s next outing. C+ WSS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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