Brooklyn's finest

Take three tales of flawed New York cops, add black gangsters, Catholicism, urban poverty, suicidal tendencies and a prostitute, then garnish with lots of blood, mood music and deadly serious star faces. That's what novice screenwriter Michael C Martin and director Antoine Fuqua did, and Brooklyn's Finest is a pot-boiler saved from mediocrity by the four top actors Fuqua attracted to the project.

The cliched cop characters are played effectively, and almost credibly, by Richard Gere (drunk failure, a week away from retirement), Ethan Hawke (cash-hungry family man stealing only from bad guys) and Don Cheadle (undercover narc who wants out). Wesley Snipes is Cheadle's drug-gang-boss best pal.

Director Fuqua is an American black who came up from the music video and MTV ranks. His biggest hit to date was Training Day, for which Denzel Washington won the Best Actor Oscar and Ethan Hawke was nominated as Best Supporting Actor.

Writer Martin's only previous produced work was as a staff writer for the TV series Sleeper Cell, and the influence of such multi-character multi-plot dramas (such as TV's The Wire and cinema's Crash) is obvious. In his first solo screenplay, the trio of police stories overlap and blend well enough, but needed more character development and less reliance on the lead actors' facial expressions of tiredness and pessimism.

Smart editing, attractive photography and the musical soundtrack's varying moods all help too, but cannot compensate for the movie's lack of depth.