Pride and Glory

Starring: Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight
Directed by: Gavin O’Connor (“Miracle”)
Written by: Gavin O’Connor (“Tumbleweeds”) and Joe Carnahan (“Narc”)

If “Pride and Glory” were an episode of “Cops,” it would be any one of the shows where a police officer pulls an eightball out of a crackhead’s pocket and the only thing the panicked druggie can say is, “That ain’t mine.” It’s director Gavin O’Connor’s stock answer for the crime-drama genre.

Sure, not all crime-dramas can be as well-acted as “Training Day” or as brutally realistic as “Narc” (written and directed by “P&G” scribe Joe Carnahan), but with “P&G,” Carnahan and O’Connor (“Miracle”) drag the story through such generic plot points and with halfhearted characters, it’s no wonder New Line Cinema decided to shelve the film for more than half a year (it’s original release date was, gasp, March 14).

Playing brother-in-laws in the NYPD, Edward Norton and Colin Farrell can’t be held accountable for “P&G”’s lack of sensibility. In the film, Norton is Ray Tierney, a straight-laced officer who, after two years working in Missing Persons, is pressured by his father (Voight), the Chief of Detectives, to head a task force in search of a cop killer. Farrell is on the other side of the law as Jimmy Eagan, a hard-ass cop who pals around with drug dealers while on the clock. It all makes for a not-so-sweet holiday season at the Tierney household as Ray investigates the murders of four policemen, while Jimmy looks for ways to cover his tracks.

While most of the boys in blue look out for their own, the same can’t be said about Carnahan who dumps some rather stagnant and unintentionally funny dialogue onto the lead actors. This may be the first film of his career where he’s not directing his own script, but responding the same way as the aforementioned crackhead isn’t going to hold up in any court.