Pride and Glory, directed by Gavin O’Connor (Miracle) starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell is being hailed as this years We Own The Night. I can see the similarities with a cop drama centering on a family who all work for the NYPD. A director with some potential tackles a mediocre script with two big actors as the lead roles. We Own The Night received mixed reviews and Pride and Glory seems to be getting the same, but I’ll tell you what I enjoyed the heck out of both films.
Pride and Glory has a lot going on at times. Jon Voight, who plays, Francis Tierney Sr., is the father and retired police chief. Edward Norton, who plays, Ray Tierney, is the younger brother who rejoins the police force. Noah Emmerick plays, Francis Tierney, Jr., the older brother with the higher rank. Colin Farrell plays, Jimmy Egan, who is married to Ray and Francis Jr.’s sister. The basic story is four of NYPD’s finest get killed in a drug bust gone wrong. This leads to Ray rejoining the police force. Ray does some police work and finds out its Angel Tezo a local drug dealer they are looking for. Ray later finds out that a cop is involved with all this. The rest of the movie is Ray being the good cop and Jimmy being the corrupt cop, with a whole lot of unnecessary sub plots entangled. All of which comes to one final badass clash.
The two lead performances are what make this movie entertaining. I’ve come to the conclusion that Edward Norton does not make a bad film, I will continue to see everything that he makes from now until he is done with acting. He puts on another great performance here. I especially like his scenes with his dad in the film Jon Voight, they go back and worth with each other arguing and it made for the most dramatic scenes of the film.
The other great performance is by Colin Farrell who continues to impress me with his acting ability. He plays a crazy corrupt cop to perfection, but you can’t help feeling for the guy who just wants to help out his family. There is one scene that stands out where Jimmy breaks into a Spanish man’s apartment on Christmas, trying to get some answers out of him. He has no mercy and threatens the man by holding a hot iron over his baby’s head. I had my hand over my face and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The supporting roles are decent, I thought they could have made some more interesting casting decisions but it was nothing that really hurt the film.
What did hurt the film was the script; it was too muddled, as they seemed to try to hard to have all these unknown details coming out of nowhere. I thought some parts and characters could have even been cut out which would have made it flow a little better. Also it seemed like they used the word “fuck” every other word. This usually doesn’t bother me as in with Reservoir Dogs or The Departed but while watching this film it took me out of some of the scenes where I was aware of the numerous amounts of profanity. At some parts you could feel Joe Carnahan’s (Narc, Smokin Aces) hand in writing the script. It has this raw hardcore feel to it and definitely makes for an altogether pleasant film.
Now come back again or I’ll slit your throat, fuck your wife, and burn your baby. Ha!
Rotten Tomatoes: 35%
IMDB: 7.5/10
Moviewiseguys: 7/10