Director Antoine Fuqua made a big impression with the Oscar-winning Training Day in 2001, which he bizarrely followed up with the misfire that was King Arthur in 2004. Now he returns to familiar ground in this gritty and violent tale of three New York cops.
Fuqua has three big stars on board. Richard Gere's Eddie is a week away from retirement and saddled with showing the ropes to a rookie cop. Sal (Ethan Hawke) is desperate and edgy: his wife is expecting twins and he needs the money for a new house. And Don Cheadle is Tango, an undercover agent caught between his fondness for the criminal who saved his life and his desire to betray him in order to land a desk job.
All three men are living in some sort of existential despair (there aren't many shades apart from black in the film): Gere's character wakes up to whisky and a game of Russian Roulette, and find his only solace in the arms of a prostitute, Cheadle discovers that his superiors may have less morality than the gang he has infiltrated and Hawke encounters criminals who have far more money than he will ever earn in his life.
While Fuqua knows how to create tension and build characters (Cheadle is notable throughout) there is a sense of having seen everything before. The ageing cop on one last mission is hardly new and Gere's relationship with his younger counterpart are reminiscent, but nowhere near as effective as, Training Day. Hawke, who was Oscar-nominated for the previous film, does his best to inject tics and affections into what is arguably the weakest character.
At over two hours long the pace is slow at times, and the climactic sequences are contrived and unbelievable. It doesn't really add much to the genre of the cop thriller and is probably strictly for fans of the actors only.
Paul Hurley
