-By Daniel Eagan

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Two men sit in a car on a deserted Brooklyn street. As the camera circles, one boasts about outfoxing the legal system. He will soon be dead, shot for a lunchbag stuffed with money. The killer is a cop drowning in debt and haunted by his pregnant wife's illnesses. His story has been told too many times, but before Brooklyn's Finest is over, director Antoine Fuqua will tack on two equally threadbare plots that leave no cliché unplumbed, no coincidence ignored, no cheap irony neglected.

Like Eddie (a grimly committed Richard Gere), a disillusioned veteran a week away from retirement. He drinks too much, plays Russian roulette, and seeks solace in the arms of a warm-hearted prostitute (Shannon Kane). Or Tango (Don Cheadle), a narcotics cop so far undercover he's lost his moral bearings, egged on by drug agents to betray his only friend. Along with Ethan Hawke's debt-ridden Sal, they will be put to the test in a Brooklyn project teeming with crooks and victims.

Fuqua frames their stories in a harsh, unforgiving landscape of tenement rooftops and after-hours clubs, of cramped row houses and battered precinct buildings. Patrick Murguia's cinematography alternates between bold colors at night and a drained, lifeless palette during the day, helping ground some of the script's more fanciful plot turns. (He also gives Wesley Snipes, calm and convincing as a drug dealer just released from prison, some of the best close-ups of his career.)

Relying on a pounding soundtrack and supercharged editing, Fuqua mashes up screenwriter Michael C. Martin's plots, steamrolling over repetitions and inconsistencies. Against the odds, he finds sparks of life in Tango's dilemmas, and moments of pride in Eddie's downward slide. What Fuqua can't do is build a credible narrative out of the competing storylines. Instead, he throws together moments and confrontations that either build to violence or fritter away to nothing.

Star power distinguishes Brooklyn's Finest from similar cop films. Hawke overdoes his character's twitchy self-loathing, but keeps his energy level high. Cheadle, who is starting to make a career out of conflicted snitches, tends to perform up to his surroundings. Snipes is a good foil, but Cheadle really raises his game for a brilliant Ellen Barkin, nailing her part as the toughest fed in the world.

No matter how good, stars can't rescue Brooklyn's Finest from an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. A director like Sidney Lumet might have found a key to Gere's suicidal cop, or added unexpected coloring to Cheadle's informant. Then again, Lumet probably wouldn't have insisted on dragging the main characters into the ludicrous bloodbath that ends Brooklyn's Finest on a laughable note.