J.J. is a rookie in the Sheriff's Department and the first black officer at that station. Racial tensions run high in the department as some of J.J.'s fellow officers resent his presence. His only real friend is the other new trooper, the first female officer to work there, who also suffers similar discrimination in the otherwise all-white male work environment. When J.J. becomes increasingly aware of police corruption during the murder trial of Teddy Woods, whom he helped to arrest, he faces difficult decisions and puts himself into grave personal danger in the service of justice.
Ambition is something to respect in an artist, but Charles Burnett's police-corruption drama The Glass Shield is such a maladroit piece of filmmaking that its weighty themes and sclerotic tangle of a plot end up making it a trial to sit through.
– Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly,
6 Jul 2010
fresh:
A powerful moral drama that tries to deal with the racism at the root of many problems in contempo American society.
– Todd McCarthy,
Variety,
26 Mar 2009
fresh:
It's a rigorous, angry piece of work, but it misses out on the psychological depths that have made Burnett's previous films among the glories of recent American independent moviemaking.
– Peter Rainer,
Los Angeles Times,
13 Feb 2001
rotten:
An implausible, wearisome clunker trying to ring true but making only dull thuds.
– Peter Stack,
San Francisco Chronicle,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
Burnett's screenplay has a tendency to be a little too preachy, especially during the unsatisfying final scene. There's a fine line between getting the message across through subtlety and becoming didactic...