Forceful Pride Finds Little Glory
Sometimes irony will just be the death of you.
Noah Emmerich and Edward Norton in New Line Cinema's Pride and Glory
Before the start of the promo screening for the new Edward Norton/Colin Farrell New York police drama Pride and Glory a couple of critics and I were talking about good movies undone by bad endings. It’s a common problem, of course, pictures with great ideas and intriguing setups felled by poor execution in the final act not exactly a rare breed.
Pre-movie conversation or no, nothing could have ever prepared me for the outright disastrous turn of events which ultimately sink Pride and Glory. For roughly 80-percent of the film’s running time, maybe even more than that, I sat in the theater absolutely spellbound. Powerfully acted, confidently directed by Gavin O'Connor (Miracle) and superbly written by O’Connor, his brother Greg and Narc filmmaker Joe Carnahan, this one was just about perfect, and before it was even half over I was absolutely certain I was witnessing one of the finest and most brutally profound pictures of the entire year.
Then, with an absolute suddenness unlike anything I think I have quite possibly ever seen in my time as a critic, the bottom drops out and the movie fades into almost unbearably horrific disappointment. The climactic turn of events beg credulity to the point they become downright laughable, the unintentional idiocy of it causing me to sit there with my mouth agape in utter disbelieving shock. What was perfect now was indescribably awful, what was once poetry was now nothing more than incomprehensible drivel, the filmmakers dropping the ball so completely their just aren’t words in the English language to describe it.
The plot is your basic police potboiler following a clan of NYPD stalwarts, father Francis (Jon Voight), his sons Francis, Jr. (Noah Emmerich) and Ray (Norton) and their brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Farrell), forced to investigate the killing of four of their brethren by a vicious drug dealer. As per usual with this Sydney Lumet-style milieu, black is not white, up is not down and not everyone is not what they appear to be, the entire family forced to come to grips with the fact one of their own might not be playing with a full deck.
Yet, for all the story’s familiarity (we did just see much of this just last Fall in We Own the Night) O’Connor and company give it a gritty authenticity bristling with hard-hearted truth and bullet-riddled sincerity. The emotional center of the film beats so strong and with such harrowing power I found I could hardly breathe, and for much of the running time I was so absolutely enthralled by what was going on the fact very little of this was remotely new didn’t bother me in the slightest bit.
All of which makes it even more unforgivable when thing devolve into fist-flying idiocy. The entire climax is built upon a series of coincidences so unforgivably asinine they are impossible to take seriously. Worse, they’re borderline offensive, the passion, care, nuance and intelligence of all that came before thrown out the window with such bone-crushing suddenness I almost wanted to scream.
It just isn’t fair. Movies as good as this one just don’t crash and burn so spectacularly. They might have problems or inconsistencies, they might even prove to be a bit unsatisfactory, but what they do not do is fall to teeny tiny pieces so infinitesimal you couldn’t put them back together again with a microscope. Watching this one do so is infuriating. I felt cheated and used, and walking out of the theater all I could really do was shake my head in disbelief muttering obscenities wondering what the heck just happened.
Wasted is Farrell’s third great performance of the year (he was also quite good in Cassandra’s Dream and – especially – In Bruges), some spectacular camerawork by Declan Quinn (Rachel Getting Married), Mark Isham’s (The Secret Life of Bees) stirring score Dan Leigh’s (Be Kind Rewind) crackerjack production design. Even more put out to dry are Emmerich (who has never been better) and Jennifer Ehle, the two actors sharing a couple of scenes together so poignantly human, so strikingly expressive, so totally rapturous they border on brilliance.
All of which added together could make someone believe I’m being too hard on the film for not quite holding it together all the way through until the end. Believe me, I’m not. Imagine just how bad things would have to get for me to discount all the greatness I’ve just described and then multiple it by ten and you would probably still not quite encapsulate the level of stupidity this one falls to. Pride and Glory has much to talk about, even more to love, yet none of that changes the fact it’s still an outright disheartening and maddening disaster pretty much second to none.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Pride and Glory Theatrical Trailer
