I adore Brooklyn though not necessarily enough to live there (I did for a little bit and realized I loved Brooklyn more when I could visit from Harlem). I have such fond memories of going to my friend Jessica Care Moore’s crib on Willoughby with a GANG of folks falling through, cooking Kwanzaa meals, almost getting attacked by bats in Prospect Park at night crossing through from the Tea Party poetry show that night, dragging my dad all the way to Atlantic to try mafe and plaintains for his first time…so many great things in Brooklyn.

Except Antione Fuqua’s new much anticipated movie, “Brookln’s Finest.”

The BF and I hit the midnight screening because we ache for the NYC so much sometimes. Going to the Arclight Hollywood, you never know what kind of crowd you’re getting at midnight. Sometimes it’s a bunch of hardcore film heads and sometimes it’s full of kids and dates. Last night we saw more black folks than we’d ever seen at once there. But the theater wasn’t even ¼ full…figures.

I’ll start with a summary. If you’ve seen “Training Day”, you’ve seen “Brooklyn’s Finest.” What’s the difference? Brooklyn. Three main characters (Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, Don Cheadle) all playing the Denzel Washington character rolled up into one. There. That’s the movie.

Now the details. The three characters are all cops in Brooklyn who are dealing with their various woes of the job (this is NOT a recruiting movie for NYPD, I can tell you that much) – some are more dire than others. Don Cheadle was the best I’d seen him be in awhile (I know he loves “Traitor” and I wish I loved it as much as he did but alas I didn’t. None of this make me waiver in my stan for him though). His storyline almost seems not worthy of his acting skills. I mean I get how hard it is to be undercover (hello! “Deep Cover”! What beats Clarence Williams III lashing of Laurence Fishburne’s going over the deep end? And if you’re going to New York undercover movies – not TV – “Serpico” doesn’t hurt to revisit). But my problem with his storyline, aside from my distraction because of Wesley Snipes’s face (what did you do, Wes?), is my problem with most of the movie. There are some gaping holes that would resolve these character’s storylines pretty quickly and, while that’s not the point of a movie, it shouldn’t be the point of distraction either. However it was good to see my buddy Jas Anderson working as he’s been grinding his acting thing for a minute now! Conflicted, Cheadle’s character wants to get out, wants to be loyal to his frienemy Wesley, wants to make Detective, wants his life and wife back. He wants a lot and doesn’t want to give up much. Pretty much you realize that the life he wants to have back really doesn’t exist anymore. Thus the moral of most undercover movies – so deep that it’s real before you know it.

Ethan Hawke’s character line was the most difficult for me in that his quest to better his family was so narrow and I couldn’t really figure out why. He only had one solution to fix his problem the entire movie. And, what a tragedy that Lily Taylor is only in the movie for like three minutes! She’s an indie queen! Forget these little waify forgettable blurs of blonde hair you see now. Lily and Parker Posey are the Rizzo’s of that Pink Lady Gang. Too bad she’s so underused as Ethan’s pregnant wife. His blind pursuit of a better life for his kids ultimately makes him blind to the lines of the law and he enters a point of no return. It is refreshing to see that kind of Brooklyn cop (Catholic, too large family, loud, smoking, drinking, probably Italian/Irish blend) not have racism as part of his corrupting MO. His character’s issues are far more universal. But it’s so hard to take acting that so good for value since the alternatives to his plight are so obvious.

Lastly, Richard Gere’s retiring cop. I love this character because he’s not a good cop and not because he beats people up or anything but because he’s been phoning it in for 22 years. His boys consider him a bad cop because he’s not passionate. That’s such an interesting take on the classic NYPD character because ultimately think of cops as too aggressive, ego tripping and not passionate about people at all. This character was ripe with potential but it doesn’t quite bloom, even in the end where he decides reluctantly to rectify his 22 years of passivity with a heroic action. This act makes me sad for him. Even sadder is his faux love for a prostitute he sees on the regular. Not so sad about his attempts to kill himself sporadically or his drinking. Everyone in theater reacted to the scene where he recounts his day to the prostitute. If you see the movie, you’ll see why.

Here’s the filler. There are some kind of half-hearted disconnected attempts to interweave the character’s storylines. As a writer, I can totally tell this was a last minute act to glue some scenes together. I’ve done it so I can smell it a mile away. It doesn’t really work because we don’t care that much if they do intersect. This only proves that the movie is trying too hard sometimes to be clever, to be hard, to be gritty and everything you want it to be but it knows it’s not.

I’m surprised Antione Fuqua agreed to do this as this seems like one of those “been there done that” things for him. Maybe in this economy everyone wants to do the familiar. I mean that new Matt Damon movie smells like a Bourne movie but it’s not (even though Bourne’s name is all over it because it’s from the makers of the franchise) and Tom Cruise does repeatsies all the time even though I swear he needs to do more “Tropic Thunder” bundles of joy.

All in all, this isn’t the Brooklyn movie I really wanted to see. It’s like that movies okay cousin.

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