'Brooklyn's' cops tumble over the edge

The hard-boiled cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest" is a throwback - a Joseph Wambaugh-ish, warts-and-all look at police work on the front lines.

It's directed by Antoine Fuqua, who made the brilliantly pulpy corruption thriller "Training Day," but who in this movie goes for a grittier, slice-of-life approach, one that looks with sympathy at its overstressed, underpaid characters, even as they make drastically bad choices.

"Finest" is an ensemble piece that splits time among three main characters. Don Cheadle is an undercover detective with a tormented allegiance to a targeted drug dealer (Wesley Snipes), Richard Gere a cynical beat cop trying to survive his last week on the job, and Ethan Hawke is a financially strapped detective starting to wonder why he shouldn't skim some of the drug money he captures.

The movie rises and falls on the strength of its performances, and I'll admit to being a little surprised that the stoic, sometimes impassive Gere wears particularly well as the grey-haired patrolman, who, when asked if he doesn't want to make his last week on the job a productive one, says, "not really." It's a plum line, ripe for overreading, but Gere underplays it nicely, and gives the movie a much needed laugh (Fuqua keeps "Finest" at too high an emotional pitch for too long).

Cheadle is fine, as usual, in the well-trod role of undercover operative who loses his moral and professional bearings - confused loyalties arise when he grows fond of the man he's investigating, and contemptuous of the bullying fed (Ellen Barkin, over the top) who's pulling his strings.

Fuqua does not have good luck, however, with Hawke as the detective pushed to the edge by collapsing family finances.

Fuqua's loyalty to the actor is understandable - Hawke paid big dividends in "Training Day" as the overwhelmed rookie. But he was more astutely cast in that picture.

Here, as a grizzled, frazzled veteran who becomes an unhinged rogue-cop bad-ass, he's less than convincing. He's also the least convincing Italian-American in recent cinematic movie history.