Recently in DVD Category

I'm starting today with my new content schedule. Since today is Monday, that means it's DVD review day. I'll admit that there's really no method to my madness when it comes to which DVDs I review except for the fact that I keep a steady stream of them coming from both the library ( yeah, free DVD rentals FTW!! ) and an online service I use.

So, what gets reviewed is whatever I happen to have at my fingertips at any given time.

I had high hopes for Brooklyn's Finest. Seriously, with the cast they had you would have thought the movie would have been pretty awesome. Richard Gere plays an aging cop with a pretty much average career to show for his 20 years on the job. He's looking forward to the day he retires - and lucky for him that day is only one week away. Ethan Hawke is a narco who wants nothing more than to provide for his growing family. With twins on the way he turns to ripping off the bad guys so he can give his family a better life. Don Cheadle works undercover. He's tired of doing it. It's tearing his life apart and he wants to move to a comfy desk job. He's promised just that if he'll do, "just one more job." Unfortunately that job is turning on the man ( Wesley Snipes ) who saved his life.

So yeah, that's a pretty interesting story and cast to get a movie going, don't you think? And for the duration of the movie things are going pretty well. There's a lot of tension and drama that's gets churned up. Will Hawke's character get the money he needs to get his family into their new home? His wife is suffering from the mold in their home because she already has asthma. With twins on the way, they are quickly running out of space. Where exactly will he get the money? Will Gere's aging, and cynical, character make it to see retirement or will his new responsibility of mentoring rookie cops get him killed? Will he actually lift a finger to do anything? Will Cheadle be able to pull off one more undercover sting on the man who saved his life - or will he get caught and executed?

All these questions get answered in the last 20 minutes of the movie. But I have to admit, I really didn't like the answers. I expected things to go much differently than they did.

Brooklyn's Finest is worth the watch, but I can only give it 3 out five stars.

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At first I was a little skeptical of this movie. I'm a huge fan of Tommy Lee Jones, but I wondered how In the Valley of Elah was going to turn out.

Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a retired Army man, now working as a gravel hauler in Tennessee. Upon receiving a call that his son is AWOL after returning from Iraq he drives to Fort Rudd, New Mexico to try and find him. While there he finds no real help from either the military or the local police. Not long after arriving his old-school, ex-military police skills are put to use in an attempt to uncover answers concerning his son's death and mutilation.

Charlize Theron plays Detective Emily Sanders, the local cop assigned to the case. She doesn't get a lot of respect from the other detectives because they believe she worked her way up through the ranks on her back. It doesn't take long before the viewer realizes this isn't the case for the single mom. With Jones' help, she's able to get to the bottom of this bizarre case and help find Jones closure through revealing the truth.

While the action is pretty slow in this movie based on real events, the acting is second-to-none. Jones and Theron make a good match that often doesn't see eye-to-eye much. It's obvious that there's little respect for Sanders from Deerfield, but by the end of the movie there's enough evidence that he has, at least, some appreciation for her efforts.

Lastly, the true message of this movie speaks to the difficulties soldiers returning from war face. Regardless of PTSD or the level of violence they must adjust to after returning from an environment where it's kill or be killed, this movie provides testimony to the hardships endured in war and their psychological effects.