Review: Pride and Glory

Overlong and tedious, Pride and Glory doles out reams of pulpy dialogue interspersed with bouts of gratuitous violence, writes Rashid Irani.

Pride and Glory
Cast: Edward Norton, Colin Farrell
Direction: Gavin O’Connor
Rating: **

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Conflict within a family is the theme in this yarn about a good cop versus crooked cops in the Latino district of New York. There was potential here for a high-voltage drama of greed and corruption. Unfortunately, the outcome is nowhere in the league of such memorable thrillers as L A Confidential (1997) or the more recent The Departed.

Overlong and tedious, Pride and Glory doles out reams of pulpy dialogue interspersed with bouts of gratuitous violence. In one particularly gruesome scene, an infant is threatened to be disfigured with a scalding hot iron.

The focus is on a disillusioned detective (Norton, uncharacteristically unimpressive) who must protect his own family of crime-busters. So what if there’s sufficient evidence to implicate his brother (Noah Emmerich) and psychotic brother-in-law (Farrell, reasonably energetic). The hard-drinking patriarch of the family (Jon Voight) seems as nonplussed as the viewer with the turn of events.

The climax in which ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ slug it out in a bar room brawl is utterly preposterous. Worth a skip.