I thought the soundtrack was good in some places, iffy in others (yes, I was sure to switch to pcm on the bluray). Seems like everything and the dialogue was pushed down in volume quite a bit just so the gunshots could give you a real kick in the ears (at full-scale digital output?...if not that, there is a generous dynamic range between the gunshots and pretty much everything else that makes sound in the movie). I'm not saying it sounded bad, though. They pop with impressive impact, but the dialogue is deep down in there on the volume dial.
I thought the movie was kind of slow paced and plodding, but still interesting from the perspective of studying the mental dramas in each of the main characters (which I assume that is why we are really brought into the film). The movie has high-energy action scenes in it, but it isn't really what makes the movie stand, imo. What struck me the most is how the destructive effects on the psyche in police work are comparable to war combat (just less accelerated). It changes you as a person, perhaps into something you don't like or other people (family) don't like. Yet, it is absolutely necessary to grow that shell to survive in that environment. It's an entirely different structure and organization to it, unlike ordinary (civilized) civilian life.
The movie also exposes an entirely new layer of bad guy in addition to the obvious parties of evil drug dealers and amoral/dirty cops. It is the nebulous bureaucracy of police administration that sits above all of that (and where the drug money "really" goes...a tangible element for people to readily grasp these days, where unprecedented waste is increasingly apparent in political houses at city/state/federal levels- "we" toil in this erratic rat race system that has been set up for us to "exist" in, while "they" watch on from ivory towers and further architect how to build a better world with the resources that are a product of our toil). I'm not trying to make specific judgments of relative evil when I describe it in those terms, either. I'm just paying note that it is all one big ugly system from top-down, for better or worse. There is no front line or demarcation where good and bad exists. If you are "lucky" (or there is some method to the madness), you just get through 22 years of it with your life intact, so you can retire.
