Movie Review: 'Pride and Glory' good at times, but unoriginal

Other directors must surely get annoyed with Martin Scorsese. He has set the bar incredibly high in several genres, from concert films ("The Last Waltz," "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan," "Shine a Light") to modern mob movies ("Goodfellas," "Casino") to biopics ("Kundun," "Raging Bull").

In 2006, he took on the good cop/corrupt cop theme and with "The Departed" brought forth yet another new standard in a tried-and-true genre that already included great films such as "Serpico," "The Bad Lieutenant" and "American Gangster."

Director Gavin O'Connor ("Tumbleweeds," "Miracle") has a hard row to hoe following in the shadow of "The Departed." "Pride and Glory" has its good moments, but the plot is muddled at times and much of the dialogue is straight out of the Screenwriting 101 textbook.

O'Connor, who also co-wrote the screenplay, makes his best decisions in his casting. Edward Norton and Colin Farrell are two actors who have never brought anything less than great performances to any character, and the ancillary players - Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich and John Ortiz - flesh out their roles as well as they can with the material they have been given.

Following a paint-by-numbers approach, "Pride and Glory" features a familiar plot from its first frame. This isn't always necessarily a bad thing in a movie, but the expression "familiarity breeds contempt" might come to mind.

Four cops have been killed in a botched drug raid, and it's obvious there's been a tip-off from somewhere inside the NYPD.

De rigueur for this genre is a family (usually, and in this case, Irish) of NYPD cops involved.

The patriarch in "Pride and Glory" is an NYPD chief named Francis Tierney Sr. (Voight). Francis Jr. (Emmerich) is the commanding officer of the squad that was home base to the ambushed officers.

Tierney Sr.'s son-in-law, Jimmy (Farrell), is a member of the same unit and his other son, Ray (Norton), is a detective who has had the formulaic "bad incident" and taken an easy job with the department.

Dad convinces Ray to head the investigation of this incident, and the path leads where every viewer of this type of film knows it will go.

There are family connections. Some characters are guilty and some are innocent. Some are ignorant and some are conflicted.

The dynamic among Dad, sons and son-in-law makes for some tense, if familiar, moments, and the interaction among the three younger men is complex. It's edgy enough, but the writing renders the relationship confusing at times. The addition of Francis Jr.'s wife - who is dying of cancer - seems a bit gratuitous.

The most original scene concerns a bad cop, an informant, a baby and a steam iron. Doing scenes where infants are at risk is a risk in itself, but hats off to O'Connor. It's an intense few minutes, but the actions fit the characters involved.

By the final act, which degenerates into a bar fight worthy of a soap opera, I was looking at my watch and begging for an ending. As usual, after a violent fistfight between family members, we have to see the catharsis that supposedly always follows these sorts of incidents. And O'Connor doesn't resist going down that road. I guess he figured, "It can't be a cliché ... everyone does it."

There are enough good scenes to make "Pride and Glory" worth seeing if one is a fan of the genre, but having to compete with films such as "Serpico" and "The Departed" stacks the odds against it affecting the viewer in any kind of significant way.

In the grand scheme, watching this gave me the urge to revisit the films mentioned above.

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.