Last night I was supposed to go on a "haunted hayride," but ended up going with a few friends to see Pride and Glory, which opened yesterday.
Pride and Glory is a cop drama. That's essentially it. It has all the elements of a cop drama: family values, corrupt cops, loyalty, etc. What it doesn't have: anything new. No twist, no over-arching theme that wows you at the end. It just goes along with a story and by the end you think you've sat through a 3.5 hour movie, only to look at your watch and realize it's only been 90 minutes. The review on RottenTomatoes.com says it perfectly.
I was trying to come up with a metaphor for the movie, and I think this one might do some justice. Imagine you and your family live in an average suburb. A family of four buys the vacant lot next to your house, and they want to build a brand new house. They're pretty much just like every one else on the block, demographically speaking. When they start building the house, though, they put up a big wall around it made of plywood. You can still hear the house being built, and you see construction vehicles coming in and out. You notice that the contractor they're using is the same one that's built several houses in your neighborhood. If you really wanted to, you could easily walk by from the front and see how they're doing. But, you're more curious to see how the house will turn out, and wait for the wall to come down. It might be something special!
After a few months, it seems like it's taking a little longer than normal to build the house. Then, when it's about 90% complete, they take the wall down, and you can see that their house looks pretty much exactly like all the other houses in the neighborhood. In fact, they simply borrowed ideas from other houses and put it into their house's design. Only, it came out pretty normal. They did a good job building it, and it's not a bad house. But it's nothing all new and exciting, which is what you were looking forward to while it was mysteriously being built.
And that, my friends, is what Pride and Glory is like.
Pride and Glory is a cop drama. That's essentially it. It has all the elements of a cop drama: family values, corrupt cops, loyalty, etc. What it doesn't have: anything new. No twist, no over-arching theme that wows you at the end. It just goes along with a story and by the end you think you've sat through a 3.5 hour movie, only to look at your watch and realize it's only been 90 minutes. The review on RottenTomatoes.com says it perfectly.
I was trying to come up with a metaphor for the movie, and I think this one might do some justice. Imagine you and your family live in an average suburb. A family of four buys the vacant lot next to your house, and they want to build a brand new house. They're pretty much just like every one else on the block, demographically speaking. When they start building the house, though, they put up a big wall around it made of plywood. You can still hear the house being built, and you see construction vehicles coming in and out. You notice that the contractor they're using is the same one that's built several houses in your neighborhood. If you really wanted to, you could easily walk by from the front and see how they're doing. But, you're more curious to see how the house will turn out, and wait for the wall to come down. It might be something special!
After a few months, it seems like it's taking a little longer than normal to build the house. Then, when it's about 90% complete, they take the wall down, and you can see that their house looks pretty much exactly like all the other houses in the neighborhood. In fact, they simply borrowed ideas from other houses and put it into their house's design. Only, it came out pretty normal. They did a good job building it, and it's not a bad house. But it's nothing all new and exciting, which is what you were looking forward to while it was mysteriously being built.
And that, my friends, is what Pride and Glory is like.
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