TORONTO - Edward Norton says his new movie about corrupt New York City cops might look like just another "genre" film but it has the potential to speak to broader issues in America.
"Pride and Glory" stars Norton as Det. Ray Tierney, who's investigating the deaths of four officers gunned down during what appears to be a routine drug bust.
Tierney's brother, played by Noah Emmerich, and brother-in-law, played by Colin Farrell, are also police officers. Eventually Tierney's investigation uncovers evidence that casts suspicion on both men.
To make matters worse, Tierney's father, played by Jon Voight, is also a cop -- one who believes that police should take care of their own.
"On some level it's about the difficulty of speaking truth to power and the tension between our loyalties to the people who do this service for us and the need to hold them to a high standard," Norton said Tuesday while promoting the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"I started to have a special interest in it when I thought maybe this can be actually something that's reflecting the moment (the United States) is going through ... in terms of its own sense of its ethics."
Torture, both physical and psychological, as a means to extract information from suspects is explored in the film.
"I looked at (the script) and felt like this has questions in it, this is questioning dynamics that our whole country is sorting through right now," Norton said.
"Whether on a local level in New York, things like the Abner Louima scandal, where there was a torture incident at play, or on a broader level."
Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was beaten and sodomized with a toilet plunger while in NYPD custody in 1997.
In recent years, reports of the American military using torture to extract information from suspected Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners have dominated headlines.
"The trick with genre, say the cop corruption genre, is ... to maybe look for a way that you make it reflect your generation's version of that genre," said Norton.
"In part it's about saying, 'What's our generation experiencing that can refract through this and make it something that's not just a cop corruption drama but that sort of ends up echoing that cultural moment?'"
