Give me Joe Mantegna and William H. Macy as partners and I'll guarantee that there will be a movie worth watching. Macy has been moving up the chain, and is brilliant here.
The whole issue of Jewish persecution is woven in the story, and Mantegna is conflicted because he is Jewish, but obviously not a practicing one. As things go, his Jewishness is challenged by the investigation. "You say you are a Jew, and you can't read Hebrew. What are you then?" He is finally confronted with the reality of hate and his role as a cop takes second place to his Jewishness.
It is about realizing that he is nowhere until he finds out who he really is. The language of the police is raw and brings everything out into the open. Detective Gold (Mantegna) doesn't find himself at the end of the film. He has a ways to go, but now he has a direction.
