THE corrupt-cop drama “Pride and Glory” con cludes with a solemn dis claimer informing us that what we have just seen is not to be mistaken for true events.
That’s a relief. You mean New York City cops don’t walk into delis in daylight, beat the innocent guy behind the counter into a stupor and shove a gun in his face – all while the store security camera presumably records the whole thing and anyone could be walking by outside?
Edward Norton plays Ray, a (possibly) honest cop wearing an unexplained scar positioned just so on his cheek. It looks like it was bought in the markdown aisle of Halloween Mart on Nov. 1.
After four officers are gunned down, Ray is assigned to investigate the case by his dad (Jon Voight), a department mainstay who advises him, “You keep the rage, cut the rest of it.” Isn’t that getting it backward? “Son, drop your calm assessment of the facts but be sure to be angry.” “Keep the rage, cut the rest” sounds more like a manual for talk-radio hosts.
Norton’s brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell), yet another cop in the family, isn’t protecting and serving the people of Gotham quite as well as he should be. He is involved in a drug ring.
Early on, he and his fellow dirty cops find a car containing a dead suspect and torch it – just below a bridge that certainly makes for a picturesque setting but from which, presumably, hundreds of drivers will notice the fireball and the police car nearby.
When the writers went to the Dialogue Store, it must have been closed because they loaded their cart from whatever they found in the Dumpster out back. Can one movie really contain all of these lines? Not just “I’m doing what I have to do” and “It’s just like ridin’ a bicycle – you never forget ridin’ a bicycle,” but also “I’m right in the middle of something I don’t know how to get out of.”
Most of the rest of the lines are so bad that the script desperately tries to save them with a word that isn’t “freak” but begins and ends the same way. So we get lines much like, “Laugh, you freakin’ scumbag!” and “What the freak is going on here?” and “I’ll slit your throat, freak your wife, and kill your kid” and “You broke my freakin’ heart, Jimmy!” and “Get your freakin’ hands off me!” and “He looked pretty freakin’ dead!”
Norton’s brother, another cop, is played by Noah Emmerich. Emmerich and Norton resemble each other about as closely as Richie Cunningham resembled the Fonz, but one of the immutable laws of Hollywood is that Emmerich must appear in all films made by New Line Cinema.
Would it be relevant to point out that Emmerich’s brother Toby was the New Line executive who keeps hiring him? Nah. That would imply that Hollywood is a corrupt institution, one in which secret deals are cut behind closed doors because blood loyalty is everything . . . Hey, wait a minute, I have an idea for a movie.
PRIDE AND GLORY
Cop schlock.
Running time: 125 minutes. Rated R (graphic violence, profanity, drug references). At the 84th Street, 34th Street, Kips Bay, others.