Brooklyn’s Finest

Starring: Richard Gere, Don Chedle, Ethan Hawke
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua (“Shooter”)
Written by: Michael C. Martin (debut)

Someone really needs to start a Save the Squibs campaign in Hollywood. Those tiny little explosive devices used in the movies to pop packets of fake blood and create the effect of someone getting shot are being wasted. While squibs are fairly cheap in comparison to other special effects, the cost can add up if you use them as gratuitously as director Antoine Fuqua does in his latest dirty-cop film “Brooklyn’s Finest.” It’s a violent, mind-numbing, and generic cop flick that kicks down the door with guns blazing and has nothing new to say.

Despite the overemphasis on the brutality of life in the hood, the blood spurting is not the real problem. Fuqua filled Denzel Washington with bullet holes at the end of his Academy Award-winning performance in “Training Day” in 2001 and that violent scene was shot to perfection. What doesn’t work in “Finest,” however, is Fuqua inability to detach himself in any way from first-time screenwriter Michael C. Martin’s horribly clichéd script and his failure to differentiate intense performances with overacting.

In “Finest,” three New York City police officers play the pawns of this wannabe gritty drama. Richard Gere (“Nights in Rodanthe”) is Eddie, a veteran cop with an alcohol problem who is only a week away from retirement. You get a sense of who he is when he rolls out of bed and into a bottle of Jack. He’s also in love with a prostitute, but the script doesn’t really explain why. Don Cheadle (“Traitor”) is Tango, an undercover cop who is caught up in the criminal underworld and hope he can soon transfer to a cozy desk job. His last assignment: to put the sting on a criminal friend (Wesley Snipes) who just happened to save his life. Ethan Hawke (“Training Day”) is Sal, a crooked cop who starts stealing drug money so he can buy a new home for his growing family.

As Gere, Cheadle, and Hawke hobble through the motions, Martin’s haphazard story structure quickly falls apart before it even begins. If there is supposed to be some kind of statement about the injustices in black America or how faith can’t always heal a reckless soul, Fuqua and Martin miss the mark. “Finest” becomes a hopeless narrative sew together with weakly-written characters with nothing to live for and no reason to change.

Without any emotion invested in any of the officers, there is not much to be concerned over when bodies begin to hit the floor and Fuqua starts thinking he is Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Even when his stock was at it’s highest nine years ago, he still didn’t come close.

Daybreakers

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe
Directed by: Michael Spierig (“Undead”) and Peter Spierig (“Undead”)
Written by: Michael Spierig (“Undead”) and Peter Spierig (“Undead”)

It’s nice to see vampires back on the big screen that don’t talk about their feelings and sparkle like Edward Cullen and all his “Twilight” pals. But even on the opposite end of the blood-sucking spectrum, “Daybreakers” isn’t what fans of the genre should consider pushing vampirism narrative into new territory (here vamps harvest humans for blood, which is running out in their vampire-run world). The problems is, filmmaking brothers Michael and Peter Spierig aren’t really sure whether or not they wanted to make a really grotesque horror movie or an action film with comedic riffs. The mix seems unbalanced and trite. There is one scene where a hungry vampire-type creature breaks into a kitchen for a late-night fleshy snack, which is fairly frightening. Other than that there is not much entertainment value “Daybreakers” can offer aside from the gallons of blood it splatters in 98 minutes of straight-to-DVD-quality type writing.