Then they passed around a report with dozens of others that did not make their cut.
One of Our Own caught the eye of Russell Schwartz, New Line's marketing chief at the time, who asked: "What's wrong with this one?".
That was when Lockhart, who hated One of Our Own because it sounded to him like a tag line, gave a kick under the table to Barrie - who thought it perfectly suited the tale of cops betrayed by a corrupt colleague.
When even the partners who call their consulting firm TitleDoctors disagree, it is clear the business of naming movies can be tricky.
"When movie titles don't work, studios are leaving potential earnings on the table," Lockhart says.
One of the most notorious examples of a missed opportunity because of an ill-chosen title was The Shawshank Redemption, the 1994 prison drama starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.
The film was lauded by critics but landed with a thud at the box office.
More recently, the Russell Crowe boxing saga Cinderella Man and the futuristic thriller Children of Men also failed to capitalise on strong reviews, in part because of titles widely seen as turn-offs.
"Titles are one of the hardest things to do because every movie is an individual brand that is going to live in perpetuity," says Christine Birch, marketing president at DreamWorks Studios, "but you only have an opening weekend to prove that you've gotten it right."
Usually, of course, the title comes with the script. Sometimes it was picked by the producer or director; in other cases, by studio marketers. Occasionally, studios redo titles because of legal issues.
As it turned out, New Line stuck with Pride and Glory for its long-delayed drama, now set for release in 2009.
Getting studios to agree on a name change is never easy (none of the titles for the 13 films Lockhart and Barrie consulted on during their first year in business was adopted).
Film-makers can become enamoured of a movie's "working" title and studios may have already invested millions in marketing a project under a particular name.
But it is not impossible.
Fox Searchlight Pictures' police thriller Street Kings, with a cast including Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker and a screenplay by James Ellroy, had been known as The Night Watchman until this year.
Test-screening recruiters found that moviegoers thought it sounded like a story about a security guard.
The sci-fi thriller Blade Runner originally bore the name of its source novel, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Last year, Lockhart and Barrie tried to persuade Sony to change the title of Hancock, a big-budget action comedy starring Will Smith as an alcoholic superhero known as John Hancock.
They told studio executives they thought the current title was vague and pitched alternatives such as Heroes Never Die, Unlikely Hero and Less Than Hero.
Sony believes it made the right move in sticking with Hancock.
The project was originally known as Tonight, He Comes, which elicited widespread snickering, and at another point was called the more fulsome John Hancock.
But a similar, single-name title worked well for Sony and Smith in 2005.
That project, Hitch, had been known as The Last First Kiss before it was changed.
Despite the disagreement over Hancock, Lockhart says that Smith, fresh off The Pursuit of Happyness and I Am Legend, "is probably the one star in the world who is title-proof. This movie could be called 'John Doe,' and it wouldn't matter." - Josh Friedman.
• What's in a name
Weak: why it bombed
Tears of the Sun: Cloying, generic name for a Bruce Willis action-adventure.
The Shawshank Redemption: Now-classic film suffered initially from a solemn, ponderous title.
Gigli: Hard-to-pronounce name did not help ticket sales or word of mouth.
Cinderella Man: Accurate historically, but all wrong for a movie about boxing.
Step Into Liquid: This documentary was about surfing. What were you thinking?
Strong: why it worked
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: Sounded inviting, but took itself a little too seriously - as a satire should.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Evoked and redefined the rollicking adventure serials of the 1930s, '40s and '50s.
Kramer vs. Kramer: Revealed a lot about a relationship in succinct, alliterative style.
Disturbia: Clever, marketable marriage of the words "disturbing" and "suburbia".
American Gangster: "American" plus almost anything sounds cool. See also American Graffiti, American Splendor, etc.
- Sources: Los Angeles Times research, TitleDoctors, Rich in Meaning.
