MOVIE: Pride and Glory

Rating: A good-murder-mystery on film
Viewed: Oct. 28, 2008
El Con with Sheila
Rotten Tomato Rating: 34%
Mine: What do they know? This was good!
EW: B+ cag: A
Genre: Crime/Cop movie
Released Oct. 24th, 2008
R (2 hrs 9 min.) a long one
Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight


Matinees before 6 pm have gone up to $7.
Dirty cops are everywhere.
Edward Norton and Colin Farrell are really good actors.
All fact, not opinion.

Okay, this movie has a horrible, sappy title. I thought it had something to do with the Civil War when I first heard it. I had no idea it would be a shoot-em-up NYC cop crime thriller. Sometimes these kinds of movies go careening around NY, giving the audience clues that don't fit because they've not understood all the slurred, rapid-fire cop discussion. You understand all that's going on in this one. It's of the "thinker" type. You're rooting for the hero, the good cop, but you're sure he'll have bad secrets or get killed. Yippee, neither happens. Satisfying ending (at least there are no shocking or sad deaths, only ones that fit into a it-had-to-happen-to-make-things-right scenario).

The Tierney family cop dynasty. Father, two sons, son-in-law. A head honcho, a detective, a patrol cop, a squad commander. Family men. Good cops. And a bad cop.

I really love the way this movie was shot. Lots of close-ups and unusual angles. It was dark. Set in the Washington Heights section of NYC (way, way north on the tip of Manhattan,under the George Washington Bridge), mostly at night, it was d-a-r-k. Even during the limited daytime shots it was dark. Inside the homes it was dark. It was dark inside the bars and drinking establishments. Well, look at the story. One wife is dying of cancer (these parts may have been the toughest to handle for me), another is up to his neck in bad deeds, another is melancholy and sad. Drug addicts, poverty, murders. Dark. Dark.

Edward Norton plays the detective, the thinker; troubled and sad about the upcoming divorce from a wife he still loves. Cooerced into statements made on the stand in a situation two years earlier that he has always regretted. It's lost him a lot. He's a loner now, smart and thoughtful. He lives alone on a tiny boat that's always rockin' and rollin' on the waves, leaking water, and cold. He's our protagonist.

How far do we go to protect family? What does honesty and integrety really mean? What is this....code....that police officers seem to have that makes them instinctively protect each other even if it's wrong? How can someone be an ultra-protective and loving father one minute and a murderer - maybe even a child murderer- the next? The plot was intriguing, but the things it make you think about are even more important.

This was a good, entertaining, well-acted film. I really don't understand movie critics. What are they looking for?