Pride and Glory (2008)

Image credit: Glen Wilson

POINT OF PRIDE Edward Norton aims for Glory in new cop drama — and comes close to the target

After decades of Bochco dramas, The Shield, and other ''gritty'' TV police shows, cop movies today rarely have the understated oomph that guys like Sidney Lumet brought to them in the '70s and '80s. But Pride and Glory is an old-style exception, 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.

Edward Norton is in top form as Ray, a burned-out detective whose investigation into the deaths of four cops leads him to suspect his brother-in-law, Officer Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell, also terrific). The climactic bar brawl and street beating unfortunately feel too stock, but otherwise co-writer/ director Gavin O'Connor puts a new shine on familiar material — something he also did in his previous film, the 2004 Kurt Russell feel-good hockey drama Miracle. If O'Connor is out to build a career revitalizing old movie genres, he's two-for-two so far. B+