Pride and Glory

Directed by Gavin O’Connor

A crime-thriller deeply invested in police mythology, Pride and Glory also speaks volumes about another pillar of repressive power: white middle-class families. Director-writers Gavin and Greg O’Connor (sons of an NYPD cop) present an Irish clan whose men in blue either tacitly accept or actively indulge moral corruption and greed.

Pride and Glory opens as said corruption and greed leaves four cops dead, bringing isolationist brother Ray Tierney (Ed Norton) to investigate the men under his brother Frannie’s (Noah Emmerich) command, including their super-evil brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell). The lot is done under the drowsy eyes of alcoholic police patriarch Francis Tierney (Jon Voight). Beyond providing the film’s chief social setting, families are also its principle bargaining chips. Threats to the department immediately threaten families’ welfare, while cops, robbers and cop robbers show they “really mean it” when promising violence to each others’ loved ones. In pronouncing those threats, the Tierney men show that the NYPD’s endemic amorality also plagues patriarchal capitalism’s favored family structure.

Expertly shot and paced, these twined self-destruction plots reveal the flaws and fractures of the Tierney and NYPD families. With both institutions’ moral compasses unhinged, the O’Connors take their criticism incredibly far – something only possible under cover of crime genre conventions – before the predictably recuperative conclusion. Pride and Glory’s problematic ending reheats a familiar, conservative status quo after 90 minutes of collapsing American power structures (sound familiar?). Still, the O’Connors should be proud, despite their inglorious ending.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.