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Al Reilly
Deputy District Attorney Aloysius Francis "Al" Reilly
Played By: Timothy Hutton
A young, idealistic lawyer and former NYPD cop.
- Audience Surrogate: As a Wide-Eyed Idealist entering a tightly-knit precinct and underworld, Reilly serves as this.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Al has total faith in the system and the NYPD. The film is all about grinding that out of him.
Mike Brennan
Lieutenant Mike Brennan
"You've got the right to remain silent, as long as you can stand the pain!"
Played By: Nick Nolte
A jovial, popular veteran NYPD cop with a hidden dark side.
- Armored Closet Gay: There's a very heavy implication Mike is a closeted gay man, whose rough and tumble behavior is his way of compensating.
- Badges and Dog Tags: Served in the Marines with Chappie before they both joined the NYPD.
- Dirty Cop: Murder and Police Brutality are all in a day's work for Mike.
- Evil Reactionary: Sums Mike up in a nutshell; he has a very regressive view of the world that stopped progressing when segregation was repealed. That the world is moving on and his way of doing things is even mildly questioned enrages him."I want things the way they used to be."
- Faux Affably Evil: Mike is a friendly, jovial guy who charms the pants off of everybody. He comes off as rough but likable, when the truth of the matter is that he's a vicious killer.
- Killer Cop: A decorated cop who thinks nothing about killing people in cold blood.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Mike is a cop who's racist, homophobic and transphobic and is eager to kill if he has to.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Despite his bigotry and murders, Mike is one of the NYPD's most decorated cops.
Bobby Tex
Roberto "Bobby Tex" Texador
Played By: Armand Assante
A Puerto Rican drug dealer.
- Beard of Evil: He's a ruthless drug dealer with a thick beard and a whiff.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Bobby Tex is very easily set off into a rage. It doesn't take much for him to get physical and assault people.
- Noble Demon: Bobby Tex is a ruthless drug dealer, but he's honest about what he is, keeps his word, and is loyal to the people he cares about.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He uses a lot of homophobic slurs against Roger and Jose Malpica to insult them, and rips off the latter's wig just to be a dick.
Luis Valentin
Detective Luis Valentin
Played By: Luis Guzmán
A detective assigned to assist Al's investigation.
- Minority Police Officer: Deconstructed. He jokes and is bitterly aware that he was brought on mostly so the NYPD could plausibly deny being racist because it has a few minority employees.
- Noble Bigot with a Badge: Deconstructed. Luis makes racist jokes to needle Chappie, who gives as good as he gets, but it's also in large part to make himself seem non-threatening to his white co-workers.
Chappie
Detective Sam "Chappie" Chapman
Played By: Charles S. Dutton
A detective assigned to assist Al's investigation.
- Badges and Dog Tags: He and Brennan served in the Marines together before becoming cops. This contributes to Chappie's misguided loyalty to him
- Minority Police Officer: Deconstructed. He's the only black detective seen in the film, but he and Luis constantly poke fun at the fact that they were hired mostly so the NYPD could brag about diverse hiring policies and / or that their colleagues firmly believe this.
- Noble Bigot with a Badge: He's racist against Latinos, but an honest cop. When Mike threatens Luis and offers him a ten-thousand dollar bribe to leak information to him, Chappie immediately tells Al. For all his loyalty to Mike, Chappie isn't loyal enough to break the law.
- Uncertain Doom: He ends the film in a coma and in critical condition. No one knows if he'll even wake up.
- The Whitest Black Guy: Mike refers to him as this frequently, and at one point tells Chappie the reason he trusts him is because Chappie is "the whitest black man I ever knew."
Kevin Quinn
Kevin Quinn
Played By: Patrick O'Neal
The head of the District Attorney's Homicide Bureau.
- Da Chief: Subverted. He initially seems like Al's ball busting, tough-but-fair boss, but Quinn turns out to be an utterly corrupt gangster in blue.
- Former Teen Rebel: A darker example than most. As a teenager, Quinn was a member of a street gang with Bobby Tex. The gang witnessed him murder a bodega owner in cold blood, and that's why Quinn wants them all silenced.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Quinn has Mike kill Texador and his gang so he can erase his past as he runs for State Senate.
- Karma Houdini: Quinn successfully uses Mike to kill his former fellow gang members and gets ready for his bid to run for state Senate.
- Persecuting Prosecutor: Quinn is more than happy to let Brennan kill people for him. Bloomenfeld also recalls that Quinn once got a black man he arrested sent to the electric chair, and joked afterwards that "I sure hope he was guilty!"Bloomenfeld: Years ago, when we still had executions in the state, he used to volunteer as a witness. Yeah, his first murder case, uhh he was a young A.D.A. then and I'm talking years ago... The case was shaky, circumstantial and he wanted a recommended death penalty from the jury. Before he was finished, he had them believing that poor black kid raped their mothers. He goes up to Sing-Sing for the electrocution. And the next day, we're sitting around, drinking coffee and he walks in with this grin on his face and someone says "Hey, how did it go?", he says, casually, "He fried!" and then he says, "I sure hope he was guilty!" and he laughs. Fuck him! Now and forever!
Leo Bloomenfeld
Leo Bloomenfeld
Played By: Lee Richardson
Al's mentor and fellow lawyer.
- Mentor in Sour Armor: To Al. He gives him sincere advice and words of caution, in addition to pessimistic observations.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: He chides Pearlstein for embodying antisemitic stereotypes.
Preston Pearlstein
Preston Pearlstein
Played By: Fyvush Finkel
A defense attorney.
- Amoral Attorney: Makes his living defending gangsters and criminals. Other lawyers regard him as a joke.
Roger Montalvo
Roger Montalvo
Played By: Paul Calderón
A gay, cross-dressing drug dealer and informant for Brennan.
- Ambiguously Bi: Referred to as gay by most of the characters, but Roger is in a relationship with a transgender woman, Jose Malpica.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Downplayed. Roger is a drug dealer who cross-dresses recreationally, but he's portrayed sympathetically and falls on the lighter side of the film's Grey-and-Black Morality.