We Own the Night (2007): B+

James Gray is an old-school classicist whose two films – Little Odessa and The Yards – were archetypal crime dramas set in the director’s beloved New York City. We Own the Night is cut from the same cloth, as it once again finds Gray breathing gritty, electric life into a conventional tale, this time about two brothers on opposite sides of the law in 1988 Brooklyn. Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) is the manager of a shady, Russian-owned nightclub that functions as a front for Vadim’s (Alex Veadov) drug-running operation. Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) is his straight-and-narrow brother, a decorated cop who has chosen to follow in the footsteps of his police chief dad (Robert Duvall). Their conflict is initially set up as a microcosm of the war on drugs – a civil war, if you will – but Gray soon changes gears to focus more squarely on Bobby’s transformative decision to collaborate with the men in blue and inform on his Russian acquaintances. It’s a switch that doesn’t offer profound storytelling surprises but does allow Gray to stage two magnificent set pieces: a meeting-gone-awry between undercover Bobby and Vadim, and a rain-soaked car chase presented primarily from Bobby’s inside-the-vehicle visual and sonic perspective. We Own the Night can be narratively stilted, and Wahlberg, consigned to the background for large portions of the late going, isn’t given a whole lot to do except look stern. Yet Phoenix is never less than a transfixing figure of moral doubt. And Gray’s direction is something stellar, from his sly use of the color red, to a series of heart-stoppingly ravishing images involving Bobby’s girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes, shot like the most beautiful woman on earth), the finest being a tender sequence that concludes with Amada stroking a kneeling, grieving Bobby’s hair as her own locks fall, in a crescent shape, in front of her troubled face.

Comments

[rob]

This was quite excellent. I thought about seeing it when I read Dan's 3.5 star review at Slant, but the addition of your positive review made it an absolute necessity (you have to pick and choose when you see as much as we do). I just caught "American Gangster" too - I didn't hate it like you, but I sure didn't like it (oh boy, hate mail!) - and boy is it sad to see a great little movie like this go relatively unnoticed amidst such unmerited ballyhooing. Wretch.

[Nick]

I was surprised that I liked it so much, but as I wrote, some of the scenes/images just knocked me out. Plus, the car chase sequence is fantastic...

American Gangster. Grrrrrrrrr.

[dennis]

All this really has going for it is the car chase sequence, the harrowing drug bust sequence, and Phoenix's performance. Otherwise, it's all rather dull in its obviousness, and ultimately off-putting in its outmoded conservatism.

I sure did love how he shot Mendes though, I'll give you that. The shot early in the movie where she's walking out into the party with a cigarette and the cross dangling over her neck is ravishing, and a shot much later on with Phoenix caressing her foot was touching.

Oh, what could have been.

[Matt]

More than anything else, this movie is just gorgeous. It's resolutely old-fashioned in its plot and dialogue, but there's such a sense of intense, poetic passion in the images and camera work that you can almost ignore the flaws. Such a shame that it came and went with almost no fanfare and the unbelievably stilted and dull American Gangster gets a freaking Entertainment Weekly cover.

And that car chase. Dear God.