Pride and Glory

Pride & Glory took a long time coming to the screen. The script was written in 1999, and took years before it went before the camera. It was delayed further even after it was completed, when another movie with a similar plot, We Own the Night, was booked into theaters two years ago. Now that it has been released, critics are suggesting that the long struggle to get it to the screen wasn't worth the time or expense. "It's no wonder" that the film was delayed so long, writes Claudia Puig in USA Today who calls it "blood soaked and uninvolving." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times says it's " the kind of film where you feel like you know the words and ought to be singing along. It follows the well-worn pathways of countless police dramas before it." How well-worn? Kyle Smith in the New York Post has the details: "When the writers went to the Dialogue Store, it must have been closed because they loaded their cart from whatever they found in the Dumpster out back. Can one movie really contain all of these lines? Not just 'I'm doing what I have to do' and 'It's just like ridin' a bicycle - you never forget ridin' a bicycle,' but also 'I'm right in the middle of something I don't know how to get out of. Most of the rest of the lines are so bad that the script desperately tries to save them with a word that isn't 'freak' but begins and ends the same way. So we get lines much like, 'Laugh, you freakin' scumbag!' and 'What the freak is going on here?'" Nevertheless, Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News comments, "Pride and Glory might take some flak for adhering to the tried-and-true formulas of cop family dramas, but as long as it's busting down doors and giving its actors opportunities to scheme and rage, it's pretty good for what it is."