Pride and Glory

Colin Farrell is one of those actors that inexplicably has a career in which he continues to get starring roles despite none of his films doing particularly well at the box office, nor indeed garnering much praise from critics either. I certainly remember some good notices for his supporting turn in Minority Report - a breakthrough performance that pushed him into the big time, however you have to wonder what he has done in the last few years to deserve getting his name on the marquee. Flop after flop has been released - all films taking well under their productions budgets at the US box office. Neither Intermission or A Home at the End of the World could even cover a quarter of their very modest budgets. Alexander was a spectacular bomb in his biggest budgeted film to date - a film in which undoubtedly people would either come to see it if the Colin Farrell name carried some sort of cache. They didn't.

Since then we have been treated to The New World (Terence Mallick flop), Miami Vice (Michael Mann flop) and Casandra's Dream (Woody Allen flop and his 2nd worst box office return in his 37 film history). 3 great directors all clamouring for Farrell's services but look where it got them. Farrell is box office poison and you have to wonder what he has to do to get himself relegated to supporting roles again - something I suspect he'd fare better in.

So we come to his latest box office crashing disappointment: Pride and Glory - a film that currently hasn't even taken two thirds of its production budget at the worldwide box office. To be fair Farrell probably is more of a supporting character in this, although still shares top billing with Edward Norton for reasons that remain elusive. Norton plays a cop assigned to investigate a multiple police homicide that seems to be more complex than some want to believe. Farrell plays his brother-in-law and fellow cop. One's corrupt, one's not. You can work out for yourself which is which. Except you wont, since you almost certainly wont watch this film, because it isn't very good.

Any good will built up by moderate first act success - a decently staged opening American Football match, some good scenes with the underrated Noah Emmerich - quickly evaporates as things descend into absolute farce. It's as if the screenwriter got half way and thought "fuck, I've got absolutely no idea how to end this things. Let's have the two main characters fight." It is completely laughably, embarrassingly stupid. It makes no sense. It makes less than no sense. And that's only one of several ridiculous contrivances that drive the story to its inept coda. Think of the worst ending you've ever seen in a film. Double it, and you've got the ending to Pride and Glory.

D