Director Gavin O’Connor’s Pride and Glory starts out strong. Edward Norton plays Ray Tierney, a solitary and jaded detective first seen making his way through the hard streets of New York City on his way to an interdepartmental football game where his lieutenant brother Franny (Noah Emmerich) is coaching his sergeant stepbrother Jimmy (Colin Farrell) to victory.

Just as these foreboding images set the stage for a tale of dirty cops and corruption, the masterfully edited last few minutes of the game prepare the audience for what should be excellent violence and action. On these two points the film delivers, though not on much else.

It might be unrealistic to hold every new film to some standard of originality when so many flood the box offices each week, but then again, the average moviegoer does not see each new release. Even those films functioning within a well-defined genre should provide something interesting to captivate the audience and make the experience worthwhile. Pride and Glory offers nothing but a familiar plot. It is a waste to go into the details of this drama, not because that would ruin the film, but because anything the audience might ever be curious about is completely revealed within the first 20 minutes.

The basic plot is that Jimmy is a dirty cop running a dirty unit, and when relations with the local drug lord go sour, four of his men turn up dead. This sparks an investigation and the patriarch of the Tierney family, Captain Francis (John Voight), to convince Ray in joining the task force.

The four cops’ deaths quickly become the focus of each character for the duration of the film. This starts out well enough, serving as a vehicle for the strong cast to flex their acting muscles. Colin Farrell does a particularly fine job of acting really ticked off after arriving on the scene. The first 20 minutes of the film would be fantastic, if only they didn’t sabotage the rest. In fully exploring this event from all angles, the audience gains omniscience unparalleled in similar films. This is exceedingly troublesome as the bulk of the movie is spent following Ray on his investigation. There is not one single twist or surprise in this film. Anything not explicitly mentioned by a character or outlined in the plot is easily surmised by the audience in answering the question: Which outcome would be most formulaic?

Perhaps more disheartening than the lack of suspense is the fact that O’Connor completely fails to capitalize on the two main characters in opposition, Ray and Jimmy. People will likely be talking about the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight for years, and with good reason. Not every film can be this good at playing characters off of each other, but O’Connor supplies the audience with next to nothing. Perhaps O’Connor purposefully keeps Ray and Jimmy away from each other in some futile attempt to build tension leading to the climax. This is a big mistake as it leaves the bulk of the film bare. The entire middle is dead space, occupied by activity so mundane it makes “Seinfeld” look like “ER.” And the climax, if it could be called that, is lukewarm at best. Rather than simply arresting Jimmy, Ray gets into a bar fight with him, just to prove he’s more of a man, or something like that.

The film as a whole is remarkably sexist. One example is the symbolism of one evil cop being joined to the righteous family through the sister, a woman serving as a framework for various lesser evils. First is that Ray and Franny’s mother and sister have virtually no lines, and certainly none of quality. There’s also the constant referencing of rape and wagging male genitals. Last but not least is the way Ray the righteous treats a drug lord’s abused girlfriend. It’s an uneasy scene that begs the question: Wouldn’t she be safer with her boyfriend?

This film could only entertain if the characters were compelling-but they are all completely one-dimensional. Jimmy, rather than exhibiting a range of thoughts and feelings, repeatedly positions himself as an entity of pure evil. He punches a woman in the mouth and holds a hot iron to her baby.

Opposite of this, Ray is annoyingly saint-like to the point where he might even be inhuman. In his police work he may cut a few corners, but this film is about family and corruption, loyalty and justice. On these issues, he is immobile.

Pride and Glory is a detective story with no suspense, failing at developing interesting opposition between characters and on developing characters at all. In this way, in being so unquestioningly bad and without any real saving grace, Pride and Glory could find some use alongside Plan 9 From Outer Space as a kind of teaching aid. Don’t try this at home.

Film Bits

Pride and Glory

Director: Gavin O’Connor

Running Time: 125 minutes

Rating: R

Now playing nearby at AMC River East 21, 322 E. Illinois St., and Kerasotes Webster Place 11, 1471 W. Webster Ave.