Mason Says

Note: If you didn’t’ see “Brooklyn’s Finest” that opened this past weekend, you may want to view the minute long trailer on the next page before you continue reading so that you have the proper context for what proceeds. At times, the movie in itself feels like a retread of stories we've seen before, but it's still a compelling story of tormented men. And it's that subtext that sets the stage for some interesting introspection of the male psyche. On with it. Click Here to Read Post & View Trailer


Roll Tape!


Most men live relatively soft. Warmed up butter comes to mind. We work square jobs. We play by the rules. We deny. We yield. At our edgiest, we might hurt someone’s feelings by saying something truthful, but even then we’ll circle back to apologize because we feel the need to keep things drama-free. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just a reminder that we’re not who we fantasize we are sometimes. Instead, who we are – most of us anyway – are practical providers for ourselves and for our families. Responsible but uninspired. Consequently, many of us labor through our lives trying our best to avoid a mid-life meltdown before we retire and die. For many of us, this is what it’s come down to – life has become one big ass yawn.

That’s why films like “Brooklyn’s Finest” or even the commercials for them can cause an adrenaline rush for many of us. "Training Day" was no different (same director by the way - Antoine Fuqua). Actually, mob movies and shows like the Sopranos are also part of the context. Popular culture has a knack for playing tricks on our minds especially when it comes to social pathologies. For fleeting moments we fantasize about running a criminal enterprise or at least possessing the swagger that it takes to do so. Hell, we even hallucinate at times about being the conflicted cop. Crooked or not, it seems far more exciting than sending emails, creating spreadsheets and doing PowerPoint presentations. And though dangerous and often deadly, having the reckless abandon to choose fight over flight seems liberating.

It’s in these moments of cinematic escapism, we get lost in the idea of being something that we’re not or, as they say, something that most of us aren’t built for. The murders and mayhem that happen throughout help to mitigate the sense of invincibility, but we still live vicariously through characters and story lines that offer a glimpse into an existence that doesn’t involve coffee, bagels and vitamins to get the day started. It’s a two hour field trip into a world where sh*t is unmarked and untraceable from guns to relationships. It's the gangster alter-ego within us that we all wish we had access to where one survives (until he doesn't) by his wits and instincts. It begs the question who would really want this life? It's twisted, but some of us find it intriguing, if for no other reason than we think the possibility of being shot to death is slightly better than the certainty of being bored to death in our normal lives.

So when Jay-Z, in the theme song for the film, asks “who’s gonna run this town tonight”, we have the urge to raise our hands and blurt out “ooh ooh ooh, pick me, pick me”. And therein lies the problem – even in our fleeting fantasies we’re asking for permission. The bottom line is we’re domesticated and harmless that way. Truth is most of us can barely run our mouths in our own households without buckling under the pressure of the wife’s evil eye so how the hell are we going to “run the town”? The idea of life imitating art is a bubble waiting to be burst when we're forced to keep things in perspective. And that' not necessarily a bad thing. One