Yesterday Last Week I watched a movie that I thought I would love: Brooklyn’s Finest. I heard a couple of interviews and thought it was a movie that I just had to see. But, when it was all said and done, I didn’t like it.

This movie review is going to be from a photographer’s point of view. After talking to my fiance about what we thought of the movie.

There is a technique many photographers use, it is called bokeh, this is when the foreground or background is in focus and everywhere else of the photograph is blurry or out of focus. Right now, I’m loving that type of photography. The reason why I like the technique is I’m telling the viewer/interpreter what I want them to the main focus of the story I’m telling through the photograph.

A Little About the Movie

Brooklyn’s Finest is a cop movie. It try’s to depict the lives of 3 cops and what they go through on a daily basis with their intense struggles of being a cop and how that effects there personal lives.

My Motives of Watching a Film

I love to watch movies to get an idea of how to tell a story. I admire them because the movie tries to give the audience enough information on how to interpret the movie.

I also like to watch movies because it gives me insight into how the director thought about in organizing and developing the story. It gives me ideas when I’m writing a story or even taking a photo.

How it Ended

The movie came together for me at the end. The movie felt like I was in class trying to figure out what he/she was trying teach me, but was hit on top of the head when the teacher directed my attention to the front of the board to give me the answer to the problem.

The bokeh technique is used everywhere. From television shows to all of the movies now. I think I could have paused each seen of the movie and taken a picture. They were insightful and interesting photos and would have loved to put them on my wall or shown to other people. I did get some great ideas of how to take a photo. However, it cheapen the movie, and slowly got on my nerves.

Not only did the movie or Antoine Fuqua forced you to pay attention to the movie, it didn’t put any confidence or trust the intelligence of the viewer/audience. Think about this, if you are forced to look at something than you will see what the other person is trying to make you understand the part of the movie that they want. To me, the director just said that I don’t trust you to interpret the movie. He insulted the intelligence of the audience who paid all that money to watch his film. Whenever we look at an literary piece, we all see something different. This is why we all can like/hate a book for a different reason from the other person.

Now that I saw this in a motion picture, it has given me more of a reason to push myself to not use this camera technique so much. There are different ways I can tell a story through a photograph. There are other ways I can give the viewer a chance to see what I possibly meant by artistic piece.

Everyone who is an artist needs to put back the faith and trust in the people who are taking the time to appreciate what they have done. This will also force the artist to push themselves to greatness and to also not lean on a technique that can turn into a crutch. I don’t want to be that type of artist.

We as human-beings need to push ourselves in our passions and not take the easy way out.