Talk about a new and different cop movie. This is it. In this cop movie, one of the cops is dirty and dealing drugs. Wait, what did you say? That’s not new? That happens in almost every cop movie? Oh, well, in this one, the dirty cop is part of the family with the good cops. Oh, that’s been done too? In the words of Spaulding, “Double Turds”.
So it may not be a hip, brand new thing that hasn’t been done before. If you can’t do something new, do something better. That’s kind of how this one goes. Pride and Glory is done very well, Norton is his usual awesome self, Collin Farrell and his massive eyebrows appears to be sober for this one and turns out a decent performance, and even with those two doing well enough, they’re still blown out of the acting water by Jon Voight who absolutely destroys his role as the father. And it’s even more impressive, because that role was almost miscast. They originally had Nick Nolte as the father, but he quit 3 days in because of knee surgery so they went with Voight. Right choice. Although the scenes where Nolte would have been playing a drunk parent would have been off the charts on the unintentional comedy scale.
Alright – plot time. We start off at a football game with the NYPD playing some other team, after the game they get a shots fired call with officers down. All the officers worked with Farrell’s character under Emmerich’s characters command. Norton and Emmerich are brothers, with Farrell having married their sister, so Norton joins the task force to find the guy who killed the four cops in the beginning. And he’s good at his job, so he starts following the clues and finds out some things that start to point back to his own family which reminds him of an incident that happened a few years earlier that he says cost him everything. So there is his inner conflict. And everything eventually comes to a head at the same time. Farrell and Norton duke it out and Emmerich faces the problems he created by overlooking too much.
The ending is interesting, it’s not the typical happy ending to a movie, but at the same time, it pretty much ends the way it has to end. I’d like to hear a little more about how everything unraveled and who got in what trouble for things, basically just tying up a couple loose ends would be the only thing.
However, the movie isn’t perfect either, but most of my problems are little nitpicky things. There is a scene in a boat with Norton and Voight, and the light coming through the blinds shines on Norton with stripes of light, and when you combine the stripes of light with the rocking of the boat, it gives a weird distortion effect and it makes it look really out of whack. Like on the old TV’s when something would be overexposed. Would have been really simple to close the blinds or throw a blanket over them to fix the problem, so I’m not sure why that was let through. Another minor thing was a touch of over-acting by Farrell at the end, he gets knocked out with a crow bar and does a complete spin and lands face up. If you get hit in the face with a crow bar, you’re going to get knocked out immediately and fall to the side face down. Again, little thing, I’m probably one of ten people who actually noticed and said “That wouldn’t happen.” Also, don’t ask how I know what happens when you get knocked out with a crow bar.
There are also a couple editing questions I’d like to ask. There is one scene in particular that I really don’t know why it’s in there. It’s the mother who’s dying from cancer crying over her sleeping daughter. Best I can figure is the director is trying to drive home the whol…actually, I just got it (seriously, in the middle of that thought it came to me). In the documentary the director talks about the movie is a look at the cancer that is corporate corruption. And the scene is supposed to be a parallel to the corporate corruption starting to crumble apart. Or I could be completely wrong and the scene is as useless as I originally thought.
You also get a digital copy with this edition. Like usual you get a portable copy and a computer copy, I don’t have any portable video devices so I just keep the computer copy. This copy is 1.3 GBs as a WMV file. The quality is lower to the point of it being noticeable. I wouldn’t let the digital copy be a swaying factor as to which version to get.
Pride and Glory is presented in a matted widescreen format and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.
Just one unless you count the digital copy.
A 1 hour 7 minute documentary behind the making of the movie call Source of Pride. I realize it’s supposed to show how hard it was to make and all that stuff, but I got two things out of it. First, Edward Norton can be a dick. Second, it gave me a whole new perspective on all the movies I’ve seen where they talk about shooting the movie in 14 days or less. When they started making Pride and Glory the studio had given them 61 days. 61!!! And three days in, the director already knew he was going to need more time. How does it take more than 2 months to shoot a movie? Find out by watching this extra feature.
Pride and Glory a good movie. It keeps your attention, it’ll keep you guessing for long enough. You’ll question parts. There are some scenes I honestly don’t know why didn’t get cut, but for the most part it’s decent. Not the best, but worth the purchase price.
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New Line Cinema Presents Pride and Glory. Directed by Gavin O’Connor. Starring Edward Norton, Collin Farrell, Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich. Written by Joe Carnahan and Gavin O’Connor. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: January 27thth, 2009. Available at Amazon.com.
