"We Own The Night" Review

-Originally posted 10/12/07 at Richmond.com (http://www.richmond.com/movies/22838)

Chances are, you're going read a lot unfavorably comparing "We Own the Night" to "The Departed." That isn't quite fair.

Despite the presence of Mark Wahlberg and a trailer that sells this flick as "The Departed 2: I Guess Somebody Lived," it could not be more dissimilar from Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning gangster flick. Writer/director James Gray makes his intentions clear with the stark, black and white photographs of the NYPD that open his new film — his influence is Sidney Lumet and the great, gritty New York cop dramas Lumet specialized in making in the 1970s and 1980s. I love Lumet's work from that period, and to see a young filmmaker aspiring to make something in the same vein is very cool.

But that won't stop me from bashing the crap out of this movie. "We Own the Night" is a mess, a ponderous, predictable cop drama that starts dragging its heels just as it should be ready to roll. I admired Gray's two previous flicks — 1994's "Little Odessa" and 2000's "The Yards" — but this one represents a real step back for the man.

The story of Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix), a club-owner and all-around sleaze-ball who's forced to help his cop father (Robert Duvall) and brother (Wahlberg) go after some nefarious Russian drug dealer, "We Own the Night" adds nothing to either the cop or gangster genres, and it's a real disappointment for all those involved.

Part of my problem with the flick is it isn't all bad. The first half is a very serviceable little cop drama. It's unoriginal and obvious, yes, but it's well paced and reasonably involving. Gray successfully apes Lumet's style for a while, and he's got some nasty surprises up his sleeve, most of which occur in the flick's highlight, a remarkably tense incursion by a wired and paranoid Phoenix into a drug lab.

This half of the flick isn't flawless by any means — Duvall and Wahlberg play one or two dimensions a piece and are as uninspired as they've ever been, and Bobby's situation has almost none of the moral ambiguity that that powered Gray's other flicks or the best of Lumet's cop dramas — but it hums along nicely.

Most of the juice in this section comes from Phoenix, who's absolutely magnetic for a while. He takes an otherwise stock character (the "bad" son who's really not that bad) and enlivens him considerably, adding all sorts of shadings and improvisational little beats that make him fascinating to watch.

And then the film takes a turn, right around the conclusion of the drug lab scene. The conflict set-up between Wahlberg and Phoenix's characters disappears, other characters start making incredibly misguided decisions just to satisfy the conventions of the plot, and any tension build up to this point just vanishes.

It gets predictable, and worse than that, it gets boring, culminating in one of the least exciting shoot-outs I've seen in recent years. Even Phoenix is just terrible in the second half, his simmering intensity giving to way to what we in the business might call "extreme apathy."

Maybe it's me, but I could've sworn he gained like 10 or 15 pounds over the course of the flick — he's a lot chubbier at the very end than he is at the beginning. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just found it distracting.

I get the feeling the second half suffers because that's when the most overt plot mechanisms kick in, and I don't think Gray's really interested in plot. I just don't think he's comfortable with it. Mood and texture are the name of the game in his other works, which makes it understandable he'd want to copy a director as evocative in the crime genre as Lumet.

As a result, the plot elements come off as unsatisfying while Gray focuses on the aesthetic qualities, a directorial choice ultimately fails him. Every scene feels so engineered in that '70s/early '80s style, but it's just an exercise for Gray — he lets in none of the spontaneity or energy you'd find in a "Dog Day Afternoon" or a "Serpico."

This kills his actors and makes the whole flick seem cold and austere. I'd equate it to listening to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot over and over again for two hours. Gray throws in some slightly idiosyncratic moments here and there, a slow-mo shot of Bobby's girlfriend (Eva Mendes) striding down a hall, a car chase in a rainstorm shot mostly from the driver's point of view, but these moments are few and far between, and they seem at right angles with the rest of the picture.

In many ways, this might work better on TV. Cut some of the violence, profanity, and nudity out, and it's an artier version of "NYPD Blue." The tired plot and character inconsistencies probably wouldn't be as jarring on the small screen, mainly because you can change the channel at any point, whereas you pay a lot for a movie ticket and unless the flick is as wretched as something like Oliver Stone's "Alexander," it's financially irresponsible to walk out.

Unfortunately, this one is playing at theaters, where its flaws shine all the more brighter. Do yourself a favor and skip it. Rent any of Lumet's films instead, wait a month to see the supposedly terrific "American Gangster," or, if you still can, check out David Cronenberg's brilliant "Eastern Promises;" it's a gangster film with something fresh to add to the genre.

I wish James Gray the best; I just don't want to have to sit through his movie again.