Crime drama treats what would be an historically bad week for the NYPD as simply the average run. Amid a series of racially charged shooting incidents, three diverse policemen (the brink-of-retirement beat cop, the stressed-out undercover cop, the off-the-rails rogue cop) pursue their individual paths on what we come to suspect will be a collision course but we find out instead is a mere geographical convergence to three separate simultaneous shootings on the same city block. Antoine Fuqua’s return to the precinct of Training Day, opposite coast, holds the attention about as pleasurably as a thumbscrew (if you can imagine it), with Ethan Hawke now graduated from rookie to the rank of Bad Lieutenant, trying desperately to finance a real-estate deal with confiscated drug money while behaving as if he is at the same time trying to kick heroin or else to win a scholarship to the Actors Studio. His purpose, his function, seems to be to make the other cast members (Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, Will Patton, Brian O’Byrne) look good in comparison, and from that angle he succeeds spectacularly. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd