Joaquin Phoenix stars as Bobby
Green – a shady nightclub manager in Brooklyn,
circa 1988. He has
grown close to the
local Russian Mafia family, but it is his own true family that causes
him
concern. Although
no one knows it, Bobby’s
father is a legendary New York City police chief, Burt Grusinsky
(Robert
Duvall), and his brother is a decorated police captain, Joseph Grusinsky (Mark
“Oscar Nominee Marky
Mark” Wahlberg). Joe
has been put in
charge of a special unit to combat the drug trade in New York,
and they have decided to target
Bobby’s club as the first place to start arresting the bad
guys.
When given the chance, will
Bobby
pick his family and the law, or his new family and life in the fast
lane?
We Own
The Night is a good idea
executed badly. The
movie starts out all
full of promise as we see the different worlds Bobby drifts between and
get a
sense of the true conflict between him and his brother.
However, writer/director James Gray
doesn’t
draw out Bobby’s ethical and moral challenge long enough to
be dramatic or
shocking enough. It
is dropped too soon,
which leaves We Own
The Night to be an aimless, predictable,
melodramatic soap
opera.
Gray converts the
movie into more of a family drama, while throwing in some
police drama. This
leads to a very basic and
straightforward film without a great deal of detail about how the
family fell
apart, showing them at each other’s throat more, giving us a
sense of betrayal
each feels about the other, and describing how Bobby descended into a
life of
lawlessness after being raised in a cop family.
Worse yet, We Own
The Night
gets sillier and sillier as we move down the quality scale from great
to
passable to predictable to unbelievable twists that just never would
happen. Also, Gray
over directs the movie. He
goes for the slow motion and elimination of sound
tricks too often and makes me feel like he was going for scenes instead
of
telling the story.
While We Own
The Night is a
movie spiraling downward, you can’t blame the acting. Phoenix
tries like crazy to make us care about Bobby even when the material
isn’t
there, but you have to love the interaction between him and Wahlberg,
which
provides the movie’s best moments, and we needed more of
these to make We Own
The Night exciting.
1 ½
Waffles (Out of 4)
We Own
The Night is
rated R for strong violence, drug material, language, some sexual
content and brief nudity.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com
