Director Antoine “Training Day” Fuqua again tries his hand at good cops, bad cops, dirty cops, and in this case three cops. Eddie (Richard Gere) has been on the force for twenty-two years and is seven days away from retirement. He’s barely used his gun. He’s more the type who calms violent situations via his soothing logic. Tango (Don Cheadle) is certainly the ultimate thug, but then we find out he’s one of them – a policeman – undercover in a major drug operation. Finally there’s Sal (Ethan Hawke) whose family of four children and a wife now pregnant with twins have outgrown their home that’s ridden with mold. This scenario paints the good sympathy crutch in justifying why he’ll do in the film. Of course my immediate way to solve it was to put his wife on the birth control pill. The three men are the quintessential Brooklyn officers, equipped with coffee cups, Priests, confessionals, crucifixes over their kitchen sinks, you name it. But unlike, say, The Departed this movie is dark and stays dark. That said, it has its own original way of doing things as it starts out slowly before opening up full-throttle. Eventually it develops into a plot that puts all three men in the same location. But while there may be some revelation in that ending, there won’t necessarily be the audience pay-off you’d hope for. Two and a half tiaras
