A boozy Irish-American cop, a sweary African-American cop and a bent Italian-American cop walk into a brothel. What do you get? The climax of...
The drama doesn’t just move between the three cops, it prowls between them, occasionally pouncing, and the film builds up quite a bit of...
Slant Magazine March 2, 2010 Watching an Antoine Fuqua film can be exhausting; the Training Day helmer directs every scene as if it’s the most important thing that ever h...
An ugly, fatuous, macho piece of self-regarding, self-pitying nonsense about New York cops.
The Atlantic January 13, 2018 All the actors are excellent in their portrayals of their characters.
From the moment Gere is introduced waking up to whiskey for breakfast, Brooklyn’s Finest segues smoothly and slickly from one cliché to another.
New York Post March 5, 2010 Brooklyn’s Finest may well have a future on cable as a drinking game. At one sip per cuss word, though, few viewers will still be consci...
metro.co.uk August 23, 2018 What gives this an extra star is Ethan Hawke: there are plenty of guns blazing in this movie but the real fire comes from his powerhouse performance.
RogerEbert.com March 4, 2010 The film has a basic strength in its performances and craft, but falls short of the high mark Fuqua obviously set for himself.
On second thought, Brooklyn’s Finest does indeed provide a new genre twist. This must be the only cop movie ever made where a character...
Brooklyn’s Finest is a billy-club sandwich: three separate cop dramas piled one on top of the other, separated by layers of dramatic che...
Chicago Reader March 4, 2010 Director Antoine Fuqua has come a long way down since Training Day.
Antoine Fuqua’s follow-up to Training Day is a bloody and sexually explicit drama that unravels like episodes of The Wire, but without t...
Fuqua tries to create the illusion of meaning by copycatting the style and techniques of better directors, but he can’t save the naked empero...
Even in the film’s supporting roles, a lot of terrific actors portray characters who are let down by this film’s rudimentary and cliché...
An old-style potboiler about desperate cops in dire straits that overcooks both its story and its stars, with Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle and Richard...
It’s quickly clear that this is textbook pseudo-heft, a creeping case of pompous bloat disguising a thoroughly hackneyed core.
Fuqua develops the atmosphere with sufficient grit to generate a degree of narrative drive and momentum during the final 30 minutes but i...
online.wsj.com March 5, 2010 Whatever one may think of the overall style -- I think it’s ludicrous – Mr. Fuqua clearly wanted his film to be operatic, and so it...
Despite its strengths, Brooklyn’s Finest has weaknesses that keep it from being great. It’s simply not as tight as a three-pronged...
A melodrama about three cliches in search of a bloodbath.
Fuqua’s sucker-punch of a picture is taut noir of the first order.
filmcomment.com November 13, 2013 the film’s remarkable cast helps Fuqua bring his sprawling web of nastiness to another level
Watching the dirty badges in this gritty urban tale lose their shine is absolutely riveting.
It’s good to see Snipes back on the big screen, and the scenes he shares with Cheadle are a highlight. But there’s so much unremit...
Antoine Fuqua is a master of this kind of anxiety – much like his acclaimed Training Day, there are moments so nerve-racking one is actua...
Toronto Star March 5, 2010 There’s nothing particularly original here in this grime-and-grit saga, but the weak material is elevated by the cast.
