Pride and Glory

Charged with re-creating the special intimacy of an extended Irish-American cop family in this ambitious, visceral, verismo-oriented and lengthy NYPD drama are such diverse actors as Edward Norton, Jon Voight and Colin Farrell. Joe Carnahan’s screenplay and Gavin O’Connor’s direction give good set-up and lay obvious trails: the impressive opening – a smack-and-groan, heightened-realist inter-emergency services American football game  – offers clues to the drama to come. Farrell’s Jimmy Egan, playing a roaring, gurning, war-painted fullback, is obviously popular among New York’s finest, but possibly something of a loose cannon; Norton’s Ray Tierney, coming late to the game, looking occupied, is the thoughtful outsider. When a drug bust goes horribly wrong – four officers killed, including Jimmy’s partner –  Ray’s dad (Voight), local chief of police, convinces Ray to head the investigation, with potentially revelatory and divisive results. Bloody, violent and increasingly derivative, ‘Pride and Glory’ betrays its initial promise as a small-scale, ‘Godfather’-esque social tapestry with crude plotting, variable acting and an all-too-guessable storyline and conclusion.