Pride and Glory
DIR: Graham Cantwell WRI: Anthony Fox PRO: Patrick Clarke, Anthony Fox DOP: Fergal O'Hanlon ED: Breege Rowley DES: Anita Delaney CAST: Anthony Fox, Gerard McSorley, Laura Way, Cillian Roche, Andy Smith, Ronan Wilmot

Pride and Glory. A movie about cops: bad cops, good cops, and morally ambiguous cops. Shot in a gritty, handheld HBO style, the film focuses on an Irish American family of cops and the scandal that engulfs them all. We get dad cop (John Voight), brother cops (Edward Norton and Noah Emmerich) and brother-in-law cop (Collin Farrell). This cozy cop family is torn apart when a shoot-out at a drug-dealer’s leaves four of their comrades dead. Returning from cop limbo to investigate, Ray Tierney (Norton) discovers police corruption involving his brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Collin Farrell). Ray’s incessant thread pulling starts to unravel the lives of his family and of his NYPD comrades.

Pride and Glory has a strong cast, with a great performance from Farrell in particular. Norton, however, is miscast; he always seems too smart and aloof to be a cop, especially compared to his dad and brother. At times he seems more like a sneering college lecturer than anything else. Voight is good, but it feels at times that he is phoning his performance in. The movie is fairly violent in places and moves at a steady pace and O’Connor does a good job of keeping it all together and keeping us interested. However, it falls apart in the last half hour or so, veering off with a contrived ending that tries to tie everything up in a nice neat package where the bad guys get what’s coming to them and the good guys retain their slightly tarnished halos. Failing to sustain its grit all the way to the end, it’s good but not great.

Brian Vaughan
(Read biog here)

Rated TBC (see IFCO website for details)
Pride and Glory is released on 24th October 2008
Pride and Glory – Official website