Brooklyn's Finest

The film was filmed in the three New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn in July 2008.[2][3][4] In Brooklyn, locations included Brownsville and there, among others, the Van Dyke Houses. In Queens, locations included Rego Park.[5] Michael C. Martin's script originally took place primarily in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, which were near where the writer and a couple of his friends grew up.[6]

The total budget for the film was in the $17 million range, and many of the actors took large pay cuts to make the movie.[5] The part of Man Man was given to Zaire Paige, a gang member from the neighborhood; three months after filming, he was involved in the murder of Lethania Garcia, for which he was sentenced to 107 years to life in prison.[7]

Michael C. Martin, the writer of the screenplay, went to South Shore High School, where a film appreciation course sparked his interest, and an anterior cruciate ligament injury derailed a possible basketball career. He studied film at Brooklyn College. After having been injured in a car accident in 2005, Martin wrote the Finest script for a screenwriter's contest. He did not win but his second prize included a subscription to the Independent Feature Project newsletter. The script also continued to gain attention. Martin found an agent interested in having him write a sequel to the successful film New Jack City. He finally found someone interested in producing his script for Finest, for which he received $200,000.[5]

In an interview at the time of the movie's release, Martin described development of the film:

"Jeanne O’Brien-Ebiri and Mary Viola are responsible for getting this movie made. Jeanne was the first person in the industry to read the script and she was responsible for getting me an agent and the staff job (as a staff writer on the Showtime series Sleeper Cell). And once the script was out there, it came across Mary Viola’s desk at Thunder Road Pictures as a writing sample for New Jack City 2. Mary, a native New Yorker, worked like hell to sell it to the head of Thunder Road, Basil Iwanyk. Basil was an executive on Training Day, he had a great relationship with Antoine. And once Antoine attached himself to the script, Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, and Ethan Hawke followed. Within weeks, it received a green light."[6]

As inspiration for the Finest script, Martin named three Italian neorealist films, Nights of Cabiria, Umberto D., and Bicycle Thief, and two directors, Italian Vittorio De Sica, who directed Umberto and Thief among others, and American Jim Jarmusch.[6]

In the interview, Martin identified his South Shore film teacher as Mr. Braun.[6]

Brooklyn's Finest premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009, and was picked up by Senator Distribution with a price "in the low seven figures".[8] Due to some financial distress, Senator Distribution was not able to fund its release in 2009.[9] The film was sold again to Overture Films at the 66th Venice Film Festival in September,[9] and was released in North America on March 5, 2010.

Brooklyn's Finest was released on DVD and Blu-ray in July 2010,[10] and topped the United States home video charts for its first week of release ended July 11.[11]

In its debut weekend in the United States, Brooklyn's Finest opened at number two behind Alice in Wonderland with $13,350,299 in 1,936 theaters, averaging $6,896 per theater.[1][12] As of September 3, 2010, the film has grossed $27,163,593 in the United States theatrically,[1] a good result for its United States distributor Overture Films, which paid less than $3 million to acquire this film's United States rights.[13] The film also grossed $36,440,201 in theaters worldwide,[1] and achieved 11th place on Box Office Mojo's "Dirty Cop" genre ranking, 1973–present.[14]

The film was met with mixed reviews. It holds a 44% approval rating based on 153 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes and has an average rating of 5.48/10. The site's consensus reads: "It's appropriately gritty, and soaked in the kind of palpable tension Antoine Fuqua delivers so well, but Brooklyn's Finest suffers from the comparisons its cliched script provokes".[15] The film received a score of 43% at Metacritic based on 33 reviews from mainstream critics.[16] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[17]

In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, concluding, "The film has a basic strength in its performances and craft, but falls short of the high mark Fuqua obviously set for himself."[18] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the actors for "bringing dimension to these stock characters", but criticized the film for being "a melodrama about three cliches in search of a bloodbath."[19]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times also gave the film a mixed review, stating, "the sheer charismatic force of much of the acting keeps you in the movie", but "Mr. Fuqua and Mr. Martin dig themselves into a pulpy predicament, and then find themselves unable to do anything but shoot their way out."[20] The Los Angeles Times reviewer commented that "Brooklyn's Finest is an old style potboiler about desperate cops in dire straits that overcooks both its story and its stars."[21]

• BET Awards
  • Nominee, Don Cheadle - Best Actor
• Black Reel Awards
  • Nominee, Best Picture
  • Nominee, Best Ensemble
  • Nominee, Antoine Fuqua - Best Director
  • Nominee, Michael C. Martin - Best Screenplay: Original or Adapted
  • Nominee, Don Cheadle - Best Actor
  • Winner, Wesley Snipes - Best Supporting Actor