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'Pride' Goeth Toward A Fall From Glory

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By CHRISTY LEMIRE

The Associated Press

Published: October 23, 2008

Updated:

Everything about the dirty cop thriller "Pride and Glory" is formulaic and forgettable, even down to its generic title.

It could be an uplifting drama about a basketball team breaking racial barriers, or it could be about an elite squadron of World War II fighter pilots.

Instead, "Pride and Glory" is an overlong saga of good and bad New York police officers battling for control.

Edward Norton and Colin Farrell are brothers-in-law and brothers in blue. When a cop killer takes down four of their comrades, years of schemes and resentments come bubbling to the surface.

It's no secret who is on which side: Norton's Detective Ray Tierney is the honorable one, and Farrell's Jimmy Egan, who is married to Ray's sister (Lake Bell), is on the take. But Ray's older brother, Francis (Noah Emmerich), whose men were killed in the opening ambush, is also a factor, as is patriarch Francis Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight), the head of the detective division.

These are Irish cops, and just to pile on the cliches, Ray and Jimmy have a climactic, knock-down-drag-out brawl at their favorite hangout, a bar that's literally called Irish Eyes.

If director Gavin O'Connor's film sounds familiar, that's probably because it's a lot like "We Own the Night," which came out a year ago. Joaquin Phoenix was the black-sheep brother, Mark Wahlberg was a young police captain on the rise, and Robert Duvall was their veteran-lawman father. That movie was just as much of a throwaway, despite its similar pretensions of Greek tragedy.

O'Connor, who is as far away as humanly possibly from the last movie he directed - the 2004 crowd-pleasing "Miracle," about the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team - co-wrote the script with Joe Carnahan ("Narc"). O'Connor and his twin brother, Gregory, the sons of a New York cop, came up with the story along with Robert Hopes. In theory, these are people who know this world intimately, so it's mind-boggling that they were unable to breathe new life into such a well-worn premise.

The question isn't who is corrupt but rather whether the family can - and should - keep the corruption from becoming known. This results in many secret conversations away from the ears of the more innocent members of the clan (wives and children) in which characters rehash who knew what about whom and when. There is, of course, the obligatory funeral featuring officers in their formal uniforms and bagpipes blaring on a bitterly cold winter day. You get the picture - you've seen it all before.

MOVIE REVIEW

Pride and Glory *½

MOVIE BOARD RATING: R; strong violence, pervasive profanity and brief drug content

STARS: Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Noah Emmerich

DIRECTOR: Gavin O'Connor

LOCATION: See Movie Times, Page 10, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: The moral code of a family of police officers is tested.

RUNNING TIME: 140 minutes

ON THE WEB: www.prideand

glorymovie.com/

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