Hollywood Hues
Cop drama

Pride and Glory loses its sting after the halfway mark and becomes repetitive,
writes Ervell E. Menezes

A high percentage of Hollywood films are about the corrupt cops and their nexus with the underworld and of these a big slice deals with the New York Police Department (NYPD) also giving rise to TV serials like the NYPD Blues. In Pride and Glory, the focus is on a multi-generational family of New York cops and their involvement with crime and corruption.

When four cops are ruthlessly killed by the underworld, it is up to Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) to investigate the case. Ray is a second-generation cop and papa Tierney (Jon Voight) is always around proffering advice and assuming the role of a patriarch. But as Ray gets deeper into the mire, he is amazed to find his brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell) is also implicated in the scandal. Ray has another brother who involved in it, so Papa Tierney finds he has too much on his plate to deal with.

How Ray goes about the job is what Pride and Glory is all about. The family element is imaginatively brought out thanks to Joe Carnahan and Gavin O’Conner’s screenplay but director O’Conner seems to drag his feet unduly and it takes all of 130 minutes to do it. The Louis Bunuel theory of brevity being the soul of wit is cast to the four winds.

True, with two powerful players like Edward Norton and Colin Farrell pitted against each other sparks will fly. But then, one shouldn’t overdo it. In fact, the film loses its sting after the halfway mark. What follows is repetitive and prolonging the agony. Some of the sequences, too, are predictable, like the fistfight between the two protagonists. Norton is noted for these scuffles, remember Fight Club?

The latter half chugs along. Declan Quinn’s camerawork is impressive and so is the music by Mark Isham but they can scarcely make up for the inordinate length of the film. Edward Norton and Colin Farrell rise to the occasion but even they are unable to sustain the film. Jon Midnight Cowboy Voight limps along in an innocuous cameo, the type handed out to yesteryear stars in the twilight of their careers. As for Pride and Glory, there is not much of either and ends up as an also-ran cop drama. It flatters only to deceive.

HOME