DVDebut: Dirty cops reign in THE SEVEN FIVE, Tiller Russell's alarming-but-entertaining doc about a Brooklyn precinct in the 1980s

How do you become a dirty cop? According to Michael Dowd, the dirtiest of THE SEVEN FIVE, the documentary (making its DVD debut this coming Tuesday) about the New York Police Department's 75th Precinct, located in Brooklyn, the key can be found in the very training of the new recruits -- when they learn that to be a "good cop" means never ratting out a fellow offier, no matter what that officer has said or done. Maybe this sort of training has changed some since Dowd's day, but I rather doubt it. Couple that training to character traits present in people like Dowd and his partner, Kenneth Eurell, and you've got a recipe for crime and corrruption that goes from stealing drugs and cash to what the current Black Lives Matter movement has been railing against.

Tiller Russell's documentary (the filmmaker is shown at right) spills out the story of the corruption within the 75th Precinct in a manner that is very nearly as entertaining as it is disturbing. As far as halfway or more into the movie, you may experience, as did I, a queasy feeling that the film is practically saluting Michael Dowd for being so fucking clever and fun in all the ways he manages to make himself rich at the expense of everyone from us taxpayers to the drug dealers he both works for and steals from.

Mr. Dowd -- shown above, in his salad days (said salad was sprinkled with cocaine rather than parmesan cheese) and below, in felon-wear -- indeed proves an entertaining and informative narrator. As do a few other folk, including his partner, Mr Eurell (shown back in the day in the penultimate photo, below), along with a noted drug dealer named Adam Diaz. (Since many of these poeple are -- or were -- lawbreakers, you'll wonder just where they are now -- and why. Do stick around for the end credits, during which you'll learn much of what you wanted to know.)

At one point during the hearings devoted to the "work" of The Seven Five, a public official asks Dowd , "Whom did you consider to be your employer: the NY City Police Department or the drug traffickers?" And the man does admit he made a ton more money off the drugs than from his salary. When a cop gets shot and killed in the line of duty, and our boys go all sad and sentimental, you may want to toss in the towel. Hang on.

Things do change, and once Internal Affairs and a little betrayal enter the picture, the darkening that any thinking person will have been demanding finally sets in. Russell's desire to weave all this together -- the various narratives, incidents, characters and interviews -- entails some first-rate editing, and co-editors Chad Beck and James Carroll are more than up to the task.

So why are dirty cops so loathesome and yet so important? Dirty politicians are worse (almost all of them are dirty these days because they acccept campaign donations and then serve the money that elected them rather than the people they're supposed to be serving), but dirty cops hit us on a more personal level. betraying everything that police are supposed to stand for. "To protect and serve" becomes "protect each other and serve only oneself." In a way, you could hardly ask for a more fitting example of what our country continues to become: a populace and its leaders dedicated to making a fast buck by any means necessary and screw everybody else. Donald Trump for President, anyone?

The Seven Five, from IFC Films and running rather long for a documentary (104 minutes), becomes available on DVD this coming Tuesday, September 15. 

DVDebut: BROOKLYN'S FINEST -- better than you've heard, but not good enough

Antoine Fuqua is developing quite a name and a repu-
tation. He may be the most commercially successful black filmmaker working today. A journeyman director of the dark and gritty, his movies always promise more than they deliver. Yet, from his first full-length effort, The Replacement Killers, he has shown such promise that each of his films has proven worth seeing, though none truly satisfies -- including his most successful:
Training Day.

Fuqua (shown, right) never writes; he just directs.  This may be a good thing, as he has a penchant for grit and the streets. He chooses projects in which sleaze is everywhere, in every color and class, and trust is rarely to be found.  However, if this director knew more about screenwriting -- plot, set-up, fruition and the like -- his films might be a lot better. It is inevitably the plot mechanics -- too-frequent use of coincidence, unbelievable last-minute heroics -- that bring his movies down.

BROOKLYN'S FINEST begins exceptionally well, with a toss-you-into-the-middle-of-it set-up and some terrific dialog between Vincent D'Onofrio (great, as usual) and Ethan Hawke (above, right).  Much of the dialog in the entire film is first-rate (the writer is Michael C. Martin); I used the Blu-Ray's English subtitles, in fact, so as not to miss any of it. Hawke, too, is excellent, but appears again in the kind of role (playing either side of the coin) he does so often -- Training Day, Assault on Precinct 13, Staten Island, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and now this one -- that he may soon be relegated to it.  Also on board is Richard Gere (above, left) who is as good as he's been in some time, playing a cop about to retire who has major trouble playing by the rules.

Playing by the rules is something few in this film manage, either because the rules keep changing, aren't there in the first place, or, when they are, seem to be in direct opposition to someone else's guidelines. This is especially true of the characters played by Don Cheadle (above, right) and Wesley Snipes (above, left). The latter is just out of prison and toying with going (semi)straight, while the former is a dirty undercover cop, vying for a promotion yet! Standing in the way of same is a new power broker on the block, played by Ellen Barkin, below. (Women figure but tangentially and remotely in Fuqua films.)

That sharp and funny dialog at the movie's beginning has to do with the concept of right and "righter," wrong and "wronger," as the D'Onofrio character puts it.  And this pretty much provides the theme for the movie itself, which then expands into dirty, dirtier and dirtiest -- with the cops, drug dealers and sex traffickers all vying for pride of place.  But once again, as good as is the set-up, the resolution is crap: full of coincidence (from finding a missing girl to setting up your best friend) and ridiculous, one-man heroics (or, in Hawke's case, one-man sleaze-oics) to save the day. As with all of Fuqua's films, I end up seeing it, being initially impressed and finally disappointed.

Brooklyn's Finest, an ironic title if ever there was one, is out this week on Blu-Ray and DVD for sale or rental.