Pride and Glory

Ed Norton stars as Ray – the good cop haunted by his past who needs to get back in the game (if you think that sentence was full of annoying clichés, this movie is not for you, the review might not please you either). He has been asked to be part of a special task force investigating the murder of four fellow officers during a drug bust gone bad, but family ties are going to make this one even more complicated than you can imagine. The four officers were under the command of Ray’s brother, Fran (Noah Emmerich). Ray’s brother-in-law, Jimmy (Colin Farrell), worked with the slain officers, and it is Ray’s father (Jon Voigt) who wants him to solve this horrible crime.

Along the way, what will Ray find?

Can he do what is right?

What is right?

Pride and Glory is such a paint-by-numbers movie, writer/director Gavin O’Connor and writer Joe Carnahan don’t attempt to add any mystery or complexity to the movie. Instead of building the story, developing details and immersing the audience in the case, O’Connor decides to give us the obvious snapshots we can see coming from a mile away and focuses more on the family ties sub-plot, which is the weakest part of Pride and Glory (and if you don’t have Michael J. Fox in the movie, those family ties just aren’t as interesting).

We get enough exclamations from all of the characters about protecting their fellow cops and all of that jazz to realize that all of these characters being related by blood or marriage doesn’t heighten the tension or change what any one of them would have done in the plot, so why harp on those relationships for half of the movie, which makes Pride and Glory go on far past the point of any of us caring.

The audience already knows what is supposed to happen, so I don’t understand why O’Connor drags it out for over 2 hours. Sure, he tries to throw in a whole bunch of “emotional” twists and elements, but none of them are emotional enough, no matter how loud he plays the sappy music, and many have nothing to do with the plot. If it wasn’t for the acting, most people might be compelled to walk out.

Pride and Glory is Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language and brief drug content.