Pride and Glory.

"Every movie faces a few obstacles on its journey to the screen. But Pride and Glory has been beset by almost every plague imaginable short of locusts: The Sept 11 terrorist attacks, a rival police movie that knocked it off the schedule, Nick Nolte's bum knee, the collapse of a movie studio, the indifference of another, three release dates and even a fight over a studio executive's actor brother." John Horn tells the story in the Los Angeles Times.

"That generic title won't help in a few months when you're staring at the DVD and trying to place it, wondering when this movie came out and whether you saw it at the time and thought it any good–or instead determined, correctly, to save it for a rental," notes Jonathan Kiefer.

Updated through 10/29.

At Slant, Nick Schager finds it "serviceable but clichéd..., fixated as it is on the attempt of an NYPD detective, Ray Tierney (Edward Norton), to maintain allegiance to both his personal and professional families, which - given that his father (Jon Voight), brother Francis (Noah Emmerich) and brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell) are all fellow officers - amount to the same thing.... Pride and Glory's commentary on law enforcement vice and decency - as well as its positioning of women as the arbiters of, and impetuses for, moral clarity - is far less immediate and realistic than its gritty aesthetic and tone would have one believe."

"[B]y the end of the film's first 10 minutes, the audience knows precisely who's who and who's up to what and how this is gonna end," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. "Which leaves 120 more minutes to fill - or three weeks, whichever comes first. How ironic that a movie filled with police officers should end up feeling like a hostage situation."

"Superbly modulated and thrilling in its subtle intensity, Pride and Glory admittedly doesn't break any new ground," writes Peter Martin at Twitch. "Perhaps I've seen one too many disappointing theatrical releases lately, but Pride and Glory strikes me as one of the finest dramatic films of the year."

s "Director-writer and co-writer Gavin and Greg O'Connor (sons of an NYPD cop) present an Irish clan whose men in blue either tacitly accept or actively indulge moral corruption and greed," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine. "[T]he O'Connors take their criticism incredibly far - something only possible under cover of crime genre conventions - before the predictably recuperative conclusion."

"Pride and Glory, with smashing direction and fine performances, says nothing we don't already know, or think we know, from years of feasting on TV and movie cop dramas," writes Malcolm Azania in Vue Weekly.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Gavin O'Connor "about growing up in a policeman's family, his personal approach to filmmaking, and drinking raw eggs after seeing Rocky."

Sara Carduce talks with Emmerich for New York.

Updates, 10/24: "Pride and Glory, which sat on the New Line Cinema shelves for a few years, is not especially good, but there is enough rough artistry in Mr O'Connor's direction to make you wish the film were better," writes AO Scott in teh New York Times. "He has a good sense of the city's wearying, exhilarating energy and an impressive ability to pull off arresting visual compositions in close quarters. Many of the indoor scenes have a raw, dangerous intimacy that keeps your attention even when the dialogue tumbles toward cliché."

"If the cop-assigned-to-probe-his-family premise doesn't give away pretty much everything that comes next, the great, gushing torrents of exposition emanating from the characters' mouths should do it," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "A plodding, formulaic police drama bathed in bluish light, Pride and Glory displays very little of either."

"A hackneyed, clichéd muddle about a good cop torn between his responsibilities to his family and his duty to uphold the law no matter the consequences, Pride and Glory would have felt second-hand and overly familiar even if it were greenlit in 1937 as a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

"Redemptively, the actors throw themselves into some daringly ugly moments, particularly Farrell, who threatens a drug dealer's infant with a hissing steam iron," notes Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. "Your crowd will gasp, as it might when Voight uncorks a beautifully boozy Christmas toast, a reminder of the brash intimacy this movie could have used more of."

Update, 10/25: "Although the acting is top-notch and much of the narrative carries a gritty resonance, the movie feels so retro at times, so pre-1980s, that you half-expect Popeye Doyle to come swaggering across the screen, still wearing his porkpie hat, still looking for The French Connection," writes Dan Barry in the NYT. "For all its occasional scandals and never-ending internal strife, the department. remains one of the finest law-enforcement agencies in the world, and those officers in the passing patrol cars are black and white, Hispanic and Asian. Still, these familiar story lines, especially about the Irish and about loyalty-protected corruption, endure."

Update, 10/29: Peter Sobczynski talks with Gavin O'Conner for Hollywood Bitchslap.

Posted by dwhudson at October 23, 2008 11:56 AM