A bleak cop drama that’s broods its way through a 140-minute running time, Brooklyn’s Finest is one third short of a messy-script-saving trinity. Directed by Training Day maestro Antoine Fuqua, it’s a three-for-one deal on used goods, operating on first-timer, and authentic Brooklyn native, Michael C. Martin’s cliché-heavy screenplay. Stars Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke do their best to alleviate the inherent faults, only to be cut at the heels by a severely miscast Richard Gere. As Eddie, a weathered, middle-aged police officer beginning his final week on the force before a much-deserved retirement, Gere strains himself to exhibit the role’s required gravitas. Watching him wax introspective as a hooker performs fellatio is enough to demand a Pretty Woman sequel—anything to prevent any future out-of-his-element woes.

Brooklyn’s Finest does consistently entertain despite its many problems. Fuqua, to his credit, maintains an intense air of dread from top to bottom, making an at least tonally captivating thriller out of Martin’s bumpy script.  Life is a box of stress for three Brooklyn, New York members of the fuzz: Tango (Cheadle), a deep-undercover veteran hoping to earn a detective’s badge; Sal (Hawke), a desperate father of four unable to upgrade his family into a nicer home on his existing salary; and the aforementioned Eddie, a soon-to-be retiree who loves a prostitute and hates mentoring rookie cops. Their storylines quietly intersect here and there—Hawke walking in the background of a Gere scene, for example— but never interfere with each other.

Brooklyn’s Finest feels like a three-for-one deal on used goods. Both Cheadle and Hawke’s thirds benefit from intense performances that exhibit just how talented, on-their-game players can elevate the most perfunctory of games. In front of Fuqua’s camera here, Cheadle and Hawke are like Kobe Bryant and Ron Artest competing in Madison Square Garden. The former’s chemistry with an underused Wesley Snipes, as a fresh-out-the-pen crime lord with friendly ties to Tango, gives their The Departed rip-off of a plot a strong pedigree. Hawke, working with Fuqua for the second time (their first collaboration being Training Day), proves as crucial to his own tale, the best of the film’s trio. Fully realized, his domestic turmoil hits hard enough that a Hawke-only film would’ve been a wiser choice than what’s presented.

Ditching the DiCaprio-and-Nicholson vibe that permeates the Cheadle-and-Snipes section could be seen as a foolish notion, however, when pitted alongside Gere’s arch, a shoddy character study that’s rendered completely pointless by its random coda. The Eddie portion bookends Brooklyn’s Finest, opening the film with the hammer-to-the-head image of the emotionally numb vet pulling the trigger of an unloaded pistol that’s jammed into his mouth and closing the show as he becomes a blood-drenched Captain Save-A-Hoe. The respectable Gere is in over his head in the part; to paraphrase a great Chappelle’s Show sketch, it’s a prime instance of “when playing against type goes wrong.”

The film’s last 20 minutes erupt into a storm of bullets, chained-up hookers and corpses, though by the time the concluding guns go off Brooklyn’s Finest has quite earned its grains-of-salt coated stripes. Entries into the cop movie canon demand even the slightest degree of innovation to overcome the genre’s done-to-death nature, or else it’s automatically lights out (take Kevin Smith’s lifeless buddy comedy Cop Out). Having previously treated the type as a riveting moral tug-of-war in Training Day, Fuqua goes full violent-prone downer in this case, and the result is sporadically potent. When the end credits roll, though, there’s no probing questions to be asked, or thoughts to consider. There’s only indifference. Oh, and the image of Richard Gere utilizing a scantily-clad woman’s oral abilities as inspiration for self-analysis. Think about that at your own peril.