Pride and Glory – Review

Reviews, Top Story

Solid police procedural nearly ruined by its final 20 minutes


Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com

Director: Gavin O’Connor
Notable Cast:
Ed Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich

Police procedurals are a tricky thing to pull off effectively. Sometimes you get a Zodiac, an Untouchables or The Memory of a Killer. Most times you end with Pride and Glory, a solid film that’s marred by perhaps one of the worst 20 minutes of the year (and that’s saying a lot with Lakeview Terrace still in theatres).

It starts out workmanlike and interesting; Ray (Ed Norton) is asked to be part of a task force involving the deaths of men under the command of his brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Their father (Jon Voight) is a higher up in the NYPD and their brother in law Jimmy (Farrell) was directly supervising the dead men. What begins as a strange case of dead cops being somewhere they shouldn’t be turns into a wider police corruption scandal headed up by Jimmy, who had organized them into low level enforcers for drug dealers, and turns into a crisis of conscience for Ray and Francis.

And for the most part, the film moves along rather efficiently. It’s a fairly effective, if highly derivative, police procedural that doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel. Gavin O’Connor, who did something similar with the underdog sports movie formula in Miracle, does the same for the most part with Pride and Glory. It isn’t apparent if anyone is dirty, or if it was a raid and O’Connor lets the film develop in a natural, organic way. Nothing is rushed or isn’t given time to develop.

It adds a depth to the characters usually not seen in this sort of film as his three primary characters (Ray, Jimmy and Francis) all have motivations and are inherently good but flawed men. Ray is about to be divorced, living on his father’s house boat, living his career in a sort of personal shame after a event many years ago forced him to compromise his values as an officer of the law. For Ray, the law is the law and there is no compromise. Jimmy is a devoted father and family man, looking to do right by his family even if it is illegal. For Jimmy, doing illegal things to bad people is ok because they’re bad people. Francis is a police captain whose wife is dying of cancer in front of his eyes, as well as those of their two young children. For him, he willingly turns a blind eye to Jimmy’s activities under the guise that he gave them permission to bend the rules a bit to enforce the law.

It makes for an interesting film, given their motivations, and all three actors are game for the roles. They work together effectively and do little things well; Jimmy is married into the family but the brothers treat him like one of their own in small, subtle ways. It’s noticeable if you look for it, and all three actors are well suited to the roles. Norton is the brooding type of actor in a dark role, Emmerich is the old hand and Farrell is the loose cannon with some moral ambiguities. We get involved in their worlds and sucked in because it’s well done and well acted; we can see why Jimmy would do something as evil as kill someone for what he thinks is a right reason. It’s flawed, logically, but it makes sense and it’s easy to understand.

The characters are well written, the film solidly plotted, and when everything falls apart for Jimmy’s world the film falls apart as well. For a film that hovers on good to great for the bulk of its running time, Pride and Glory falls into “forgettable in a couple weeks” by virtue of its final act. Its shocking because the film was written by Joe Carnahan (who helmed Narc and Smokin’ Aces), and one would expect a typical genre movie to have a much cleaner ending than what’s provide.d

The last 20 minutes of Pride and Glory are the ultimate buzz kill to the film, as the requisite sort of ending the film requires is given the most inane and ridiculous way to play itself out. It doesn’t ruin the film, but a good ending makes it one of the better crime films of the last couple years. As it stands, it remains a good but flawed fillm.

FINAL RATING (ON A SCALE OF 1-5 BUCKETS):