We Own the Night Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)October 18th, 2007
WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007)
A Movie Review by Jonathan Moya
Rating: B+ or 3.5 out of 5
The Review:
I always though it was my fate to be a Hollywood screenwriter-- to write pap, snort coke with rolled hundred dollar bills, drink myself into oblivion and write that classic novel that never sees the light of the days because it is locked away in a desk draw. That is until I learned that I can't stand the taste of alcohol, wouldn't know where to find some coke if my life depended on it, and that the closest I will ever get to Hollywood would be a movie theater. (The novel is still locked away in the closet of my head, waiting for the right words to come out.) So, I do what I am suppose to do-- write about Hollywood from a distance.
That other fate I leave to Joaquin Phoenix in We Own the Night. And for most of the movie he gives it a good try.
Bobby Green (really Grusinsky) lives the life that most of Hollywood dreams about. He manages the Le Caribe, a Brighton Beach nightspot the size of two football fields-- and curiously only one bar. He snorts as much complimentary nose candy up his bazoo as he wants. And just to show he is alright, he has only one old lady he can bonk any time he pleases. And when that old lady is Eva Mendes seductively fondling her coochie on a gold lame covered couch, you know he is one happy humper.
So, when the local Russian dope czar Vadim Mezshinski (Alex Veadov) plops his long brown pony-tailed ass at the VIP table each night and starts passing out numbers, Bobby pays it no mind.
But this is a melodrama of classical proportions-- meaning that FATE in capital letters and of the needle-in-the-eyes Greek kind is going to come knocking on his door pronto. Mezshinski/Grusinsky notice the fateful rhyming.
Bobby's big secret is that he is an honest guy from a long line of upright guys in blue. His brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) just made Lieutenant and daddy Bert is the Chief of Police (Robert Duvall).
At a party honoring Joseph's promotion, the opening salvo between father and son is, "I hear your using your mother's name." That's cop speak for: "You turned out to be such a pussy, son."
They wont forgive him for not being a cop.
It is a point that brother Joe defiantly wags in Bobby's face after a raid of the nightclub that makes a lot of noise but garners little real smack. In true brotherly fashion they hug each other with a few vicious jabs to the chin.
Dad separates the two and gives Bobby the straight dope. "It's a war out there. You're going to either be with us or the drug dealers."
Bobby sees the point and decides to wear a wire and eventually become a cop only after Mezshinski unsuccessfully tries to have Joseph whacked-- and Bert becomes a picture in the hall of legends when he dies for the cause in a spectacular rain-soaked chase under the El.
The director James Gray, Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix previously teamed up on The Yards (2000), a morally ambiguous feature about crime and corruption amongst the contractors responsible for maintaining, repairing and refurbishing New York city transit trains. It was a moody, semi-autobiographical statement piece about honest people trying to find a middle ground in a corrupt system.
We Own the Night by comparison is a throw back so full of highly structured plotting and black and white thinking that some gray critics will easily dismiss it as manipulative hokum. Manipulative yes, hokum no.
Gray stages a great car chase filled with digitally created torrents of splattering rain, jack-knifing trailers, careening, tumbling and flipping cars all unavoidably flying at a powerless Bobby with a first person fury.
The final shootout is staged in a grove of dry reeds put to a torch. The smoke, the instinctual lunging to running shadows and blind firing makes the case for fate as grand arbiter and slayer in a dandily ingenious way.
While fate may make for great action pieces, it unfortunately only provides for unoriginal characters. Once the nasty pest of freewill is swatted down, imagination follows. And fate just coldly marches to its bloody conclusion.
The resignation in Joaquin Phoenix's face matches the cold calm of Mark Wahlberg and the stoic force of Robert Duvall. The Grusinsky's are fates grim poster family.
Fate is not fun. It makes critics mad, and audiences bored.
We Own the Night from the very start was doomed to a B+.
The Credits:
With: Joaquin Phoenix (Bobby Green); Mark Wahlberg (Lt. Joseph Grusinsky); Eva Mendes (Amanda Juarez); Robert Duvall (Bert Grusinsky); Antoni Corone (Michael Solo); Moni Moshonov (Marat Bujayev); Alex Veadov (Vadim Mezshinski); Tony Musante (Jack Shapiro)
Directed by James Gray; Produced - Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg; Composed (Music Score) by Wojciech Kilar; Set Decoratored by Catherine Davis; Edited by John Axelrad; Sound/Sound Design by Thomas G. Varga
"We Own the Night" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sex, drug use and abundant profanity.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
