A couple of nights ago I watched a special on TCM about the Warner Brothers and paraphrasing Jack Warner
he said that if he went to the bathroom once during a movie that was a
good sign, twice meant the movie was okay but if he went three times
you knew the movie was a loser.During the 2 plus hours of Brooklyn's
Finest I went to the bathroom 4 times--okay, I had a diet coke and I'm
old but that weren't  the reasons!

I have been a fan's of Richard Gere since the days of "American Gigolo", looking For Mr. Goodbar"
and "An Officer and a Gentleman" not only because of his acting and
looks but because of his hair! I've always wanted hair like his and
still do. :O) He is one of the few actors who can draw me to a movie
and he doesn't disappoint me in this one.

All
the actors raise far above the script and bring more to the movie than
the material provides. More and more we are seeing movies following
different characters, indifferent story lines, who, at one point or
another, will interact with each other so a part of the mystery in this
movie is when and how that will happen.

Richard Gere is the veteran cop who is a week away from retirement while Don Cheadle is the policeman with a moral center and Ethan Hawke is the Catholic cop with 4 children, twins on the way and a house with mold that is affecting his wife and the pregnancy.
Go ahead and guess what happens because that is what the whole movie is
about.  I was wrong in one of the endings but, maybe, that was because
I went to the men's room at a wrong time.

The
acting by all, including Wesley Snipes, Will Patton, Lili Taylor and
the supporting players are all top notch and i was pleased to see Ellen
Barkin in a film.

There is way too much violence, many scenes lingered over far too long and I don't know if the director, Antoine Fuqua, and director of photography,  Patrick Murguia,
are from Brooklyn but they obviously love that part of New York, making
even the projects look like high rise condos glistening in the sun.

There
is frontal nudity, lots of drug dealing, smoking, blood, bullets,
fights, sex and all that you would have found in the cop movies of the
70s and 80s or more recently on cable TV, not to forget the melodrama.
There really isn't anything new here except maybe rawer and rougher
violence.

Should you be a fan of Gere, Cheadler and/or Hawke this movie is worth seeing otherwise skip it.