This bad-apple cop drama is the kind of movie that Sidney Lumet used to make in the Seventies and Eighties, and it hasn't evolved a great deal since.
The brutal slaying of four NYPD officers lights the touchpaper to a plot involving a whole police family – brothers Edward Norton and Noah Emmerich, brother-in-law Colin Farrell, and father Jon Voight – and the belated discovery that one of them is rotten to the core. Joe Carnahan (Narc) co-wrote the script with director Gavin O'Connor, both names suggestive of the Irish-American machismo and sentimentality that dominate the mood here.
The problem is that the dilemma of loyalty – to the badge or to the family? – feels like something we've seen before, and heard before, too. What sets it apart is the top-drawer acting: Norton and Farrell, the above-the-title stars, are fine, while Emmerich and his ailing wife (a shaven-headed Jennifer Ehle) are considerably more than that. Bravo to them, even if the film is at least half an hour too long, with one grotesque torture scene that should have been the first thing to go.
- More about:
- Cinema
- Colin Farrell
- Film Directors
- Irish Politics
Reuse content
