Pride and Glory

Homicide: Life on the Street; The Shield; The Wire: when it comes to cop sagas, TV can’t be beat. After all, it takes a special movie to compete with the depth of plotting and characterisation afforded by the serial format. But it can be done.

Fresh, smart and exciting, Michael Mann’s Heat and Scorsese’s The Departed certainly earned their stripes.

But while Pride and Glory doesn't reach those dizzy heights, it tells an interesting story about the Tierneys, a family of New York-Irish cops proudly headed by hard-drinking chief of detectives Francis (Voight).

When four cops under the command of his eldest son, Francis Jr (Noah Emmerich), are gunned down on a supposedly routine drug bust, dad puts his other boy Ray (Norton) on the case.

Ray immediately sniffs a rat. A whole nest of them, in fact. And, begorrah, if the one carrying the most corrupt fleas isn’t his own brother-in-law, Jimmy (Farrell).

Wavering between the needs of the thriller and the human drama, director Gavin O’Connor occasionally has to roll with the clichés of a script which - after the excellent Narc - suggests his co-writer Joe Carnahan had his feet up.

But it's carried by moments of real tension and committed performances from Farrell, Norton and Jennifer Ehle asFrancis Jr's cancer-stricken wife.

Elliott Noble