Pride and Glory (Rated R) 2 Stars�

    About three-quarters of the way through Pride and Glory (130 minutes) one of the characters heads off-screen, mumbling “I’ve had enough.” At this point in the movie, pretty much everyone should be able to clap in agreement. Did the world really need yet another police procedural focusing on corruption in the NYPD? Especially one so utterly boring and poorly acted? There was not one person in the movie correctly cast, there is no audience connection with the characters and the writing is boring and predictable.
    {mosimage}We open on men playing football while their families cheer them on. Get used to it, because for the next two hours men are pretty much just shoving each around while women sit in the background with nothing to do but provide emotional support for the men while they argue with each other. The game is interrupted, and the film moves to a bloody scene, the aftermath of an ambush in which four officers were killed. The chief of police, Francis Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight) asks his son, Detective Ray (a miscast Edward Norton), to lead an investigation into the murders. Meanwhile, Ray’s brother Francis Jr. (Truman’s best friend Noah Emmerich) and brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) trigger his supercop radar by looking at each other shiftily, and generally telegraphing their guilt to everyone in sight. 
    The film certainly recalls police corruption in the 1970s, but there is nothing new here. Director/screenwriter Gavin O’Connor can’t even write decent dialogue. This is a movie by, for and about men. It wasn’t the most terrible police movie ever, but neither is there anything to really talk about, so let’s play improve the movie. 
    Idea one: Make Francis Tierney Jr. a woman with a sick husband instead of a man with a sick wife. It would be so much more interesting to add another layer to a clichéd character by making this a movie about the pressure on women to conform to masculine ideals while caring for a sick husband who is challenged by his inability to conform to masculine ideals. It would just make more sense if there was a legitimate reason for a detective to turn a blind eye to the kind of extreme corruption (Pride and Glory is a little short on character motivation) shown in the film. 
    Idea two: Replace Jon Voight. His strangely waxed and stiffened complexion was distracting as anything, and he can’t seem to meet anyone’s eye. In every scene, rather than talking to the character he is with; he seems to stare directly at the floor. Did he even know he was making a movie?
    Idea three: Create female characters who aren’t poorly written, badly acted wallpaper. Aren’t there any corrupt female police officers? Aren’t there any capable female politicians? This is the one of the most sexist movies I’ve recently viewed. All the women stay home; safe behind four walls…the men wander the streets and then come home to their women, whom they ignore. At one point, and I swear my mouth dropped open, Tierney Sr. orders his wife to leave the conversation and go to her room — and SHE DOES. Of course, when the character is first introduced she seems more like his daughter than his wife, since he is approximately 90 years old and she can’t have celebrated her 50th birthday yet. So, wrapping up — don’t bother. Two minutes after the credits roll, you’ll have forgotten what you just watched.