It's not just the cop who's corrupt

Rating: 1/10 (30 December 2007)

The acting was good, which is about the best that can be said for this movie. It exploits ethnicity, racial culture, tough talk, and violence for the sake of entertainment. None of what it presents is justified by the highly predictable ending.
Did the people who made this want it to be like "Serpico" and "The Departed"? They failed to understand that it's really creepy to make a hero out of the Denzel Washington character. Fans will say that Washington's character is not a hero, that the dialog and script clearly depict him as a bad cop. Despite that, he is the most powerful character in the film by miles, which makes him the hero. His demise is ultimately effected by an anonymous band of machine-gun toting thugs we have not previously seen, leaving the impression that this guy was so powerful that none of the other characters could stop him -- not a very satisfying conclusion.
The first two-thirds are slow, consisting of little more than Washington acting uncompromisingly tough and Hawke acting compromised by his ambition to advance. Only in the last third of the movie does something resembling a plot materialize, almost as an afterthought.
The action was unrealistic. The dialog -- of which there was so much that a viewer could follow and understand the movie with eyes closed -- was artificial. It takes more than violence and tough talk to make a good film, unless the viewer is only after cheap thrills.