Pride and Glory Movie Review (2 Stars)

Movie Review by Michael Phillips

Colin Farrell (left) stars as 'Jimmy Egan' and Edward Norton (right) star in Pride and Glory

"You keep the rage, you cut the rest of it loose."

So says Jon Voight's Manhattan police chief to his NYPD officer son, played by Noah Emmerich, in "Pride and Glory."

The line is very pulpy, no question, but Voight has a way of tossing it off that (A) doesn't oversell it, and (B) suggests his character hasn't cut the rest of it loose at all.

The grime and loss and dead bodies have started to eat away at his morality.

"Pride and Glory" is full of interesting little grace notes, and the cast is excellent, yet it grows more and more frustrating. It has everything going for it except a story that doesn't send the audience out miles ahead of the plot developments.

To be clear: Director and co-writer Gavin O'Connor, who wrote the script with Joe Carnahan, has no interest in treating his dirty-cops scenario, involving conflicted family loyalties and lots of drug money, as a mystery. Straight off it's plain who's clean, who's on the take (or worse) and who's in the middle. Edward Norton is the clean one, Detective Ray Tierney, a scandal-tainted officer now voluntarily consigned to Missing Persons. After a bloody ambush leaves four officers dead, Voight's character arm-twists Ray, who is his son, into heading up the task force investigating the murders.

It's a family affair all around: The dead men served under Ray's officer brother, played by Emmerich. The Tierneys' brother-in-law, Jimmy, played by Colin Farrell, is just shifty and jumpy and rageful enough to indicate a conspiracy. O'Connor's main concern is to keep the dirty cops one step ahead of the clean ones while closing in on the drug lord responsible for the carnage. Most every scene is thuddingly on-point, and despite some pretty extreme violence -- at one point Farrell's borderline sociopath threatens the infant child of a drug dealer with a hot iron -- you wait for Norton to get wise to the corruption sloshing all around him.

What works in "Pride and Glory"? The little things help, such as the way Voight hits his character's degree of drunkenness at a family get-together just so, or the tenderness Emmerich brings to his scenes with his dying wife, played by the superb Jennifer Ehle. Norton's solid, too, but he cannot make much of his largely functionary character's reckoning. The plot is too familiar, too reliant on coincidence and expediency. Put it on the maybe-on-cable list along with last year's "We Own the Night." Remember that one?

 

"Pride and Glory" Movie Trailer

 

About the Movie "Pride and Glory"

MPAA rating: R (for strong violence, pervasive language and brief drug content).

Running time: 2:09.

Starring: Edward Norton (Ray Tierney); Colin Farrell (Jimmy Egan); Jon Voight (Francis Tierney Sr.); Noah Emmerich (Francis Jr.); Jennifer Ehle (Abby Tierney); Lake Bell (Megan Egan); John Ortiz (Ruben Santiago).

Directed by Gavin O'Connor; written by Joe Carnahan and O'Connor; photographed by Declan Quinn; edited by Lisa Zeno Churgin and John Gilroy; music by Mark Isham; production design by Dan Leigh; produced by Gregory O'Connor. A New Line Cinema release.

Edward Norton and Colin Farrell star in Pride and Glory, an authentic, gritty, and emotional portrait of the New York City Police Department. The film follows a multi-generational police family whose moral code is tested when one of two sons on the force investigates an incendiary case involving his older brother and brother-in-law.

The case forces the family to choose between their loyalties to one another and their loyalties to the department. Pride and Glory also features an ensemble cast that includes Noah Emmerich and Jon Voight. It is directed by Gavin O’Connor (Miracle) from a screenplay by Joe Carnahan & Gavin O’Connor based on a story by Gavin O'Conor & Gregory O'Connor & Robert Hopes.

A saga centered on a multi-generational family of New York City Police officers. The family's moral codes are tested when Ray Tierney (Edward Norton), investigates a case that reveals an incendiary police corruption scandal involving his own brother-in-law (Colin Farrell). For Ray, the truth is revelatory, a Pandora's Box that threatens to upend not only the Tierney legacy but the entire NYPD.