Pride and Glory: Critic Reviews

A tightly acted and emotionally bruising corrupt-cop family drama that feels like the kind of serious, slow-burn NYPD movie nobody -- not even Lumet -- makes anymore.

Pride and Glory, directed by Gavin O'Connor, plods across familiar ground. It's yet another movie about the fraternal disorder of the police.

A detonation of flatulent, macho-sentimental gibberish is what this ugly and violent film positively farts out of the screen at you.

Pride's only saving grace is Edward Norton, whose mere presence raises the level of a film several notches. But it's unclear why he lately has chosen such worn-out material.

Pride and Glory would be risible if it weren't so reprehensible.

Director Gavin O'Connor and co-screenwriter Joe Carnahan take a perfectly fine B-movie premise and slow it down to an A-movie pace; in the process, they remove the juice that keeps a story like this honest.

How ironic that a movie filled with police officers should end up feeling like a hostage situation.

The dirty-cop drama Pride and Glory overshoots the mark by spinning its implausible, hyperviolent tale around too tight a family circle.

Granted, the opening scenes are a shaky-cam chaos. Mawkishness and bleating illogic plague the endgame. But I might have forgiven even that had the remainder of the movie not been ruined in the trailer.

Well-paced, well-acted, Pride and Glory is much richer than routine.

There may not be much new about director Gavin O'Connor's cop-corruption drama, but it's packed with enough gritty action and unflinching violence to keep things interesting.

It follows the well-worn pathways of countless police dramas before it.

Pride and Glory is full of interesting little grace notes, and the cast is excellent, yet it grows more and more frustrating. It has everything going for it except a story that doesn't send the audience out miles ahead of the plot developments.

Pride and Glory definitely stirs up some drama. But the script doesn't serve the drama well.

A gritty thriller in the bloodline of Sidney Lumet's compelling New York City cop stories Serpico, Prince of the City and Dog Day Afternoon, it also offers deeper meaning for anyone willing to look for it.

Not that the movie's a knockout by any means. But it does bring enough integrity, good acting and old-fashioned mean street snarl to the formula to show it can still work.

There's nothing new about the film, including its basic problem: a cast of talented actors cut off at the knees by stilted, cliched writing.

When the writers went to the Dialogue Store, it must have been closed because they loaded their cart from whatever they found in the Dumpster out back.

What we're left with isn't an embarrassment, but isn't anything for this proud cast to glory in, either.

There's nothing really wrong with Pride and Glory, apart from an excessive degree of brutality, but there's nothing terribly revelatory about it either.

What it lacks in subtlety and intelligence it makes up in violence, brutishness, and hackneyed story lines. These are qualities best enjoyed at home.

A talented cast and moments of brutal violence can't dislodge a sense of ho-hum predictability in Pride and Glory.

What makes the characters in Pride and Glory real -- and raises the movie above the standard corrupt-cop fare -- is their capacity to live and die in shades of gray.

It wants to be different; yet, in the end, the elements that separate this police corruption film from those with similar themes and subjects are those that derail the climax and send this freight train careening out of control.

A top-notch cast including Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight really get the job done, with spare, tough/tender performances that rank among their best work.