Director Antoine Fuqua has struck such a nerve with movies like "Training Day" and "Brooklyn's Finest," that cops sometimes ask, "Were you ever on the job?"

No, but the former Homewood and Hill District resident counts among his friends police officers, men in what he calls the service business.

"They don't make any money, they don't get psychological evaluations often enough and, sometime, they're internally, spiritually dying because they can't take care of their family. They're prideful people, they've lost their way, they don't believe in it anymore," he said in a recent call, rattling off reasons why they go off the rails.

Or they got sucked into bad decisions and "now they're in it. Even in a movie like 'Serpico,' if you take the [payoff] money then you're part of the guys. But if you take that money, then what happens to your soul?"

Mr. Fuqua, who directed Denzel Washington to his best actor Oscar in "Training Day," reunites with his co-star Ethan Hawke in "Brooklyn's Finest" opening today. He's a narcotics officer struggling to support his growing family, Don Cheadle is deep undercover, Richard Gere a near-retirement burnout and Wesley Snipes an ex-con.

Mr. Cheadle's character starts to live the life and is in danger of being hopelessly lost in it, while Mr. Gere plays a uniformed officer who has seen too much.

"He doesn't want to do anything and that's almost worse. He's got the uniform on ... you expect him to come and do something and he just turns his cheek, he turns his back."

And yet Mr. Fuqua knows actual officers are under enormous pressures and often witness the worst in mankind. "You see a young child dead or hurt or beaten ... I don't know how you go home and be in a good mood or be a family guy.

"How do you deal with it? And when you start seeing it too often, do you go to alcohol? Do you go to a hooker or do you go to the church? I mean, where do you go and if it becomes overwhelming and too much and you stop believing and you die inside. Is that when they shoot themselves?"

As Mr. Fuqua was filming, he read a story in which experts said law enforcement officers more often die by their own hands than in the line of duty. That stuck with him.

"When you see on the news about a cop shot a kid or executed a kid in the subway station or the Sean Bell anniversary is coming up soon," he said, referring to the 23-year-old unarmed man killed on his wedding day outside a Queens club. "Was that decision made at that moment or were there some issues going in the months before?"

Mr. Fuqua calls his movie "a letter to the police officers, it's a letter to our officials. It only works if you fall in love with the characters. It's only a heartbreak if you understand the characters and they're sympathetic."

They're not your typical action-movie tough guys. "They're not Bruce Willis," who Mr. Fuqua directed in "Tears of the Sun" released in 2003. "They're great actors and they feel very real and that's what I wanted so you understand."

"Brooklyn's Finest" is a cautionary tale, he says, and a reminder not to charge racism or jump to conclusions when police turn up in news reports. "Let's not be so quick to say what the reason was. Let people explore a little more why this happened."

The movie finally gave Mr. Fuqua the chance to work with Mr. Snipes, sentenced to three years in prison for income tax evasion but appealing his conviction. He plays a drug dealer fresh out of prison after eight years.

"When I read the script, I couldn't imagine anybody else," the director said. "I wanted a guy, again a sympathetic guy, who you can tell has grown up, an intelligent man who regrets some of his choices. He doesn't want his old life but he can't get a new one but he doesn't know what to do."

And yet the wages of sin is death, which explains some of the bloodletting.

"The movie's a spiritual journey, really, it's the story of Job for me, which is why I come over the graveyard that way [with the camera]. Are all good men dead?"

Mr. Fuqua's real-life locations during his 41-day shoot included the Van Dyke projects in Brooklyn and all the neighborhood noise, activity and potential danger.

The production held auditions so people could go after certain parts and the mother crying in the beginning was hired from the neighborhood. The former Pittsburgher also started the Fuqua Film Program to help train youngsters in filmmaking.

A first-time screenwriter named Michael C. Martin penned "Brooklyn's Finest" and was still working for the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority when filming started.

"He was still working on the train station down there, I would call him and go, 'Michael, I want to adjust this scene, let's talk about this,' he would go, 'Hold on a second' and the train would go by. You couldn't hear him."

Mr. Martin eventually took Mr. Fuqua's advice, quit his job and started hanging out on the set -- and realizing how directors or actors have to change writers' words.

If writing was new to Mr. Martin, the Sundance Film Festival was new to Mr. Fuqua, who took his movie there in January 2009. He considered the showing a test screening of a rough cut but others were panicking.

"Then the reality kind of hit me: I need a distributor, I need to sell this movie. And it's a tough movie and I'm in an environment where there's not a lot of money anymore and you can't make toys off of it. There's no 'Brooklyn's Finest' dolls."

But the movie found a distributor and opens today and Mr. Fuqua is casting his next project, "Consent to Kill" based on the Vince Flynn thrillers, and also developing a movie about Pablo Escobar.

It's been a year since he's been back to his hometown and says, "I've had people talk to me about making films in Pittsburgh. I haven't had material yet, stories yet that can bring me there. ... It's called 'Brooklyn's Finest,' " he joked.

"It would be great for me, though."

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