Pride and Glory

Another surprise from the summer. When I first saw the previews, I thought, "Another cop movie, ho hum." But there was something about it that looked interesting in spite of that, and the cast was intriguing, so I took a chance. I'm really glad I did. This film is violent, intense, and difficult to understand at times (a lot of the dialogue is spoken really fast, with various accents, and in the midst of other conversations and surrounding noise), so you have to pay attention, but it is really worth the effort. Amazingly, it has something new to say about police corruption and its effect on the community. It didn't seem to do much business at the box office, but that's probably because it was too dark for summer, didn't have a big star, and none of the characters wore a cool costume.


PRIDE AND GLORY

The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.

The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.

What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.

Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.

But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.

Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.