Good cop, bad cop, white cop, black cop

Three New York cops, three stories of moral uncertainty on the job, one week in Brooklyn. Given the choices they must make, you get the feeling this can’t end well for all of them.

Director Antoine Fuqua of “Training Day” fame is fortunate to work with an A-list cast here. Featuring Richard Gere as a burnt-out veteran nearing retirement, Don Cheadle as an undercover narc and Ethan Hawke as a crooked cop, the film inextricably weaves their trajectories. Focusing on one or two of the stories might have sufficed, but cramming the three stories together makes for a convoluted tale in which holes are dug but never filled.

The interesting part of the film is trying to decipher the good guys from the bad guys. Fuqua wisely does not make this distinction black and white; it’s about “righter and wronger” as Hawke alludes to early on, because every decision is a test of loyalty, and their loyalty to the police profession is the first sacrifice.

Never featuring a dull moment, “Brooklyn’s Finest” falters in its lack of a natural progression. You can almost feel the puppet-master screenwriters pulling the cops’ strings.