A good cop-bad cop dilemma in ‘Pride’
All you need to know about “Pride and Glory,” which stars Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich and Jon Voight as a family of cops, is contained within the first few scenes. Scene 1: We learn that Ray (Norton), his brother Francis Jr. (Emmerich) and their brother-in-law Jimmy (Farrell) all work for Dad, Francis Sr. (Voight), the chief of Manhattan detectives. Scenes 2 and 3: A drug bust goes terribly, suspiciously wrong, four officers including Jimmy’s partner are killed in the line of duty, and Francis Sr. puts a reluctant Ray in charge of the investigation. When Ray picks up a queasy thread of evidence that will lead to no place good, however, Francis Sr. tries to persuade him to put the kibosh on it.
If the cop-assigned-to-probe-his-family premise doesn’t give away pretty much everything that comes next, the great, gushing torrents of exposition emanating from the characters’ mouths should do it. A plodding, formulaic police drama bathed in bluish light, “Pride and Glory” displays very little of either. And aside from the question of why Norton, Farrell and Emmerich signed on to star, there’s very little mystery in it, either. From the moment the conflict is hinted at, the movie has only one place to go -- to the place where good cops are good and bad cops are bad and justice is meted out to those who need meting, though the innocent suffer as well.
Cop dramas have a tendency to spill blood in equal proportion to their sentimentality, and “Pride and Glory” is a very bloody cop drama, filled with filthy crooks and filthier cops, innocent children and martyred wives. Francis Jr.’s better half (Jennifer Ehle) is dying, and Ray’s previous investigative contretemps cost him his marriage, so he’s now reduced to leaving Christmas gifts on his pretty ex-wife’s stoop. Directed by Gavin O’Connor and written by Joe Carnahan and O’Connor (from a story by Gavin O’Connor, Gregory O’Connor and Robert Hopes), the movie is as histrionic as it is ham-fisted, a bad combination that leads to scenes such as the one in which officers threaten to torture a baby to get their point across. Menace courses through “Pride and Glory” like a bad drug, but the experience -- save perhaps for the scene in which the drug dealer MacGyver-esquely shoots his doctor through a potato (nifty silencer!) -- is anything but enlightening. These are very, very bad lieutenants indeed. And the sooner they’re out of your life, the better.
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‘Pride and Glory’
MPAA rating: R for strong violence, pervasive language and brief drug content
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Playing: In wide release
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