Pride And Glory
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Writer: Joe Carnahan and Gavin O’Connor (screenplay); Gavin O’Connor, Greg O’Connor and Robert Hopes (story)
2008
All in all, Pride and Glory is a generalized story of police corruption and its implications on family life. Granted, it is not as great as The Departed (what can be, really?) but that’s mostly because of the story and how the plot moves forward. The faults lie in the script because it holds back – the film has so much potential to jump off the screen and really grab the audience but it’s overly cautious. There are so many characters that not enough time is taken to really delve deep into their development, and they become one dimensional. We are shown the facts about how all of their lives intertwine and the consequences of one person’s actions on the whole family structure, but we cannot connect with any auxiliary characters because they are constantly on the sidelines, taking a backseat to the main plot line with Ray Tierney (Edward Norton). If there were less characters, or more time taken for their development then this film would have been better. Edward Norton did carry the film but there wasn’t even any insight into Colin Farrell’s character that would have explained his reasoning for doing any of the things that he did – all that was given was he’s simply a bad cop, abusing his authority and only through his final act of self sacrifice he really shows any kind of human emotion and we can see a character beginning to evolve, but by then it’s too late. Edward Norton certainly stole the show as he does in most of his films, but for this one it would have been nice if he were to share the screen with some of the other characters. Everything in Pride and Glory should be taken at surface value, because just like the cinema screen on which it’s projected, there is no depth beyond.
