I’m a big fan of the gangster/mobster/underworld sub-genre, so I was looking forward to seeing Brooklyn’s Finest, the latest by director Antoine Fuqua, he of Training Day fame.  Like other films recently, I was let down.  On the other hand, it’s better than most things out there.
     Being able to make an urban, crime drama takes a very deft hand.  Screw it up and it comes off clichéd , phony or silly.  Do it right, and you’ve got something close to a perfect allegory for life.  Brooklyn’s Finest is at neither end of this spectrum.  It’s the kind of film that has potential, but it gets in its own way.
     Fuqua puts together the kind of cast that could pull off something very intriguing:  Don Cheadle, Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, and Wesley Snipes are the four legs of a story built around a cop fast approaching retirement, one’s that undercover and maybe getting the lines blurred, another with four kids already and his wife expecting number five, and a midlevel drug lord back on the streets after doing eight years.  I’ll let you figure out who is who, but it doesn’t really matter.  On top of those guys, there are at least four others  from HBO’s sensational series The Wire in various roles.  They all do a great job.  The problem is not the acting.  The problem is in the execution.
     In Brooklyn’s Finest there are some really good scenes.  Scenes that pull you in and make you clinch your jaw with tense anticipation.  Like during the drug raids or when the police are in the projects.  There are some awkwardly interesting scenes where you’re unsure whether to shake your head in disbelief, laugh, or feel pity for the characters.  That’s good stuff.  On the other hand, some scenes seemed forced.  When two of the main characters are first on screen together, not only does the dialogue seem hackneyed, there is no back story between the two to make you believe that they’re as close as brothers.  It’s too soon for this situation to develop.  It seems as if Fuqua tried to have too many stories crammed into one picture.  If he were to use any combination of story lines and characters, there could have been two or maybe three other films made to complete a saga.  Instead, things get too big and unwieldy towards the end and it goes into a direction that left me puzzled and a bit disappointed