Plot New York City, 1988. Club manager Bobby Green (Phoenix) hasn’t told his criminal associates that his brother Joe (Wahlberg) and father Burt (Duvall) are prominent policemen. When Joe is seriously injured, Bobby resolves to take up his crusade.
Review
Writer-director James Gray has only made three films to date - Little Odessa in 1994, The Yards in 2000, and now We Own The Night. His habitual turf is organised crime with a side-order of family melodrama and the outer boroughs of New York City. Like Little Odessa, this is set in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, home to a large Russian community (and, therefore, the Russian Mafia), but it’s surprisingly shaky on the specifics of its 1980s setting. The major locale is a huge discotheque, which seems as if it should be in Manhattan in the 1970s, and the real influx of Russian organised crime came with the fall of the Soviet Union, a few years after this is set. Meanwhile, the cops-and-crooks angle leaps back beyond even the 1970s Sidney Lumet movies Gray would like to evoke, to trot out clichés about brothers on opposite sides that were hackneyed in the 1930s.
Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, stars of The Yards, have both come a long way since their last Gray teaming, but sadly take a step back here. Phoenix shoulders the film as the prodigal son of the police family, who enjoys his spell as a coke-snorting party-fixer but turns true blue when a fiendish baddie puts his brother in the hospital, while Wahlberg is stuck with a straight-arrow pain-in-the-ass cop role that requires him to sit out a whole stretch of the action (and a last-reel development which would be interesting if it weren’t thrown away). Eva Mendes is stuck with the most thinly conceived role as Phoenix’s hot-tamale trophy girlfriend, who starts grumbling when he has to cut back on his party lifestyle and gets increasingly fed-up with his family dramas. Even reliable Robert Duvall, playing yet another crusty patriarch, doesn’t bring much to an entirely conventional role.
Gray has a touch with contrived but suspenseful action sequences - here, a car chase/murder attempt on dangerous roads in driving rain, and a climactic raid on the Russian Mob which involves hunting through a field of burning reeds. But too often he defaults to unwieldy dollops of soap operatics - the three male leads forever snarl recriminations at each other before tragedies lead to manly tears, vows of vengeance and frankly unbelievable plot twists. Though as gloomy and humourless a melodrama as they come, it can’t get over a mid-film hump as an unbelievable plot development comes out of left-field and sidelines any notion of gritty, on-the-streets credibility. This sort of thing might play in the context of one of those Hong Kong jump-in-the-air-with-a-gun-blasting- in-each-hand pictures, but it can’t be shoehorned into a movie that otherwise wants to take place in the real world. If the New York Police Department really worked like this, they’d be as terrifying as the Mob they’re supposed to be taking down.
Even given the unlikeliness of the set-up, the film doesn’t deliver anything like credible emotional drama. We can tell from a few of Duvall’s barks why the hero would want to change his name and become a semi-crook, but Phoenix is asked to portray a character arc that stretches the patience - and only really takes fire in a scene where he turns on his former best friend, a good-time guy who has helped set him up for yet another bungled hit.
Verdict This just can’t compete in an arena with the likes of The Departed - which at least makes a point of its contrived storyline - let alone the high watermark set for cops vs. drugs drama by the TV series The Wire.
I really thought this was going to be really good, I saw the trailer a dozen times and it showed real promise. Only to be disappointed and kicking myself later after the final mintues. Sure, the perfomances were gripping. Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Walhberg was super hot as one badass and the other the good cop turned scared. Eva Mendes was useless in it, stupid slut. But the whole film was a bitter disappointment, a hell load of talk and when there was action it only lasted for a few mintues. Don... Read More
we own the night is certainly not awful or boring its just rather average full of things youve seen done better perhaps in the work of lumet and scorcese. joquin phoenix is sutably intense in the lead but heis also backed up well by wahlberg and duvall any film which starts with eva mendes pleasurning herself with phoenixs hand down her knickers cant be all bad iliked grays previous the yards i didnt find the story far fetched i ... Read More
I really liked this up to a point. The fist half i really quite liked it but then it turned into a predictable and sloppy revenge drama that was quite frankley laughable yet deeply deppresing. Its a neat idea but could have been pulled off nicly if wernet for the awful last half of the film. ... Read More
I don't know if I have enough evidence yet to exhibit a good fit on a graph, but so far I'm warming to my Inverted Law of Movie Trailers: the better the trailer, the shitter the film. In this case, it's Ridley Scott's n Gangster had a great trailer but was underwhelming. the Nighti]had a crap trailer but is the film that Gangster should have been.
It starts with a take on a pretty familiar brothers-on-opposing-sides cop drama: Mark Walhberg is a NYPD cop, Jocquain Phoenix is his nightcl... Read More
Just back from seeing this and thought it was so-so. I was actually really enjoying it for the first half an hour or so but then the whole thing became so contrived and implausible that it was impossible not to lose interest. By the end I really couldn't believe what I was seeing. Despite it's gritty, realistic look the film becomes inceasingly ludicrous as it builds to a fairly poor finale. Would advise giving this one a miss. ... Read More
The best parts of this boring film are the car-chase about two-thirds of the way through, and a solid central performance from Phoenix . It all feels disappointingly conventional. We spend the vast majority of the time with Bobby and sympathise with his conflict deeply, but we're never given the same expansion of character for his brother or father. This severely affects Wahlberg's performance, as the hugely-competent actor is given nothing to do, other than look intense and thoughtful. Even the... Read More
Don't even remotely fancy it, just looks like a by-the-numbers cheap-ass cop thriller. And Robert Duval is rubbish in everything except Apoc Now. Oh yes he is. ... Read More
I have to agree with this review (although I thought it is perhaps a bit generous giving it two stars), everyone involved has made similar films that are a lot better, it just stretches credibility too far for the viewer to really give a shit what happens by the end. The car chase in the pouring rain was well staged, but there are few too many moments that are just out and out unrealistic.
For one, for a film that is supposed to be set in the New York club scene in 1988, why the obsession wit... Read More
Classic
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