L'Elite de Brooklyn

Antoine Fuqua follows the same line he set out in Training Day, putting his story in the environment of a city full of violence, crime, gangsters, police incompetence and powerlessness, whose top officers are playing their own game and are more concerned with their careers than with doing good. Within the genre, it is above average, however in this category, there is a lot of competition, and Brooklyn's Finest, with all due respect, does not belong at the top. Not so much because Richard Gere acts in it, whom I personally dislike because, in my opinion, he belongs to the category of actors who simply play their role and do not experience it. It is more about general likability, to which Fuqua succumbs, the improbability of certain situations, exaggeration, and the frequency of shootouts because a glimpse of life in Brooklyn looks worse than life in war-torn Baghdad and the film could have been better handled in terms of the screenplay, i.e., the ending is weak. The fates of the three policemen could also have intersected in a more sophisticated way. Overall impression: 65%. (14/02/2012)

A Brooklyn mosaic full of great actors. Hawk came up with the goods, as did Don Cheadle, Snipes surprised with his performance - given a good opportunity and he’s still got it - and Richard Gere? I don’t know what made him take this type of role, but he was seriously excellent. In story terms this is slightly below-average (it looks as if it came out of GTA IV), that tries to be unnecessarily violent in some places. But depiction of gloom and despondency works very well. (11/07/2010)

I'm not entirely sure about the reality and credibility of some characters and their roles. Or rather, for the sake of clarity, do Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes portray the real style of an uncompromising gangster from Brooklyn? It's not just about hitting somewhere on the sidewalk with a Mercedes, wearing Prada glasses and giant Breitlings wrist watches, and having a Gucci belt around the waist, somehow some things didn't fit. What was brilliantly done in American Gangster, for example, is lacking here. Naturally, there are other things associated with that, which I don’t think quite fit, like the behaviour of some characters. It all seems too much for effect, artificial and unreal. It felt that Antoine Fuqua knows absolutely nothing about this area, he just bought a few expensive props and borrowed fancy cars, and BAM!, we have gangsters. The plot is fine, the triple intertwining of the stories is interesting in the end. The strongest scene in is at the end with Richard Gere, fantastic. Otherwise, it's just average with a few weaker and a few stronger moments. (17/07/2010)

If it weren't so unnecessarily dragged out, I might enjoy it, but in this case, I just felt like a parade of characters was passing before me, with only the one played by Richard Gere feeling truly interesting. The final massacre is pretty cool, but that's kind of it. Excellent actors in an average to below average film. (13/10/2016)