They’d be better off owning a flashlight!
For a bunch of guys who purportedly ‘own the night’, this star-studded cast spends a great deal of time stumbling around in the dark. Set in New York in 1988, this period-piece police thriller promises little—and delivers.
     The story was penned, and the film directed, by James Gray who’s anything but prolific, having squeezed out just three projects in a career in feature films that now spans 14 years. The second of his three flicks, The Yards, boasted Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in the cast; so striking are their physical characteristics and personas, that Gray reprises their casting—this time as brothers.
     In We Own The Night, Wahlberg and Phoenix’s characters lead separate and disparate lives; amazingly, in the early part of the film nobody ever pegs them for brothers. Just as well, because Wahlberg plays a highly decorated captain in the NYPD, while Phoenix plays the manager of a night club (not the one River used to go to) that is home to the city’s biggest drug lords.
     Bobby Duval plays their father, and the Deputy Commissioner of the NYPD; needless to say which is his favorite son.
     Duval was brilliant… in Apocalypse Now; and, in the role of tough, smart police captain, Mark Wahlberg was an inspired piece of casting… in The Departed. And Joaquin Phoenix’s two Oscar nominations came, unsurprisingly, for Gladiator and Walk The Line.
     Clearly, when Gray stumped up to the studios with his idea, the bean counters thought having some big name actors would make this a great film. Not for the first time in Hollywood history, the bean counters were wrong.
     The film opens badly and, if nothing else, is consistent.
     In the opening scene Phoenix is getting all hot and bothered on the couch of his nightclub office with, his on screen squeeze, Eva Mendes. The problem with this scene (and all their other love scenes for that matter) is the glaring number of continuity stuff ups that have Mendes in and out various states of dress (and undress) as the view changes from close up to wide and back. Wahlberg’s opening scene is no less continuity error riddled; not to mention (oops I mentioned it already) Duval’s big car chase late in the piece.
     Judging from the major studio output of the past year or so, one could easily be persuaded that the relationship between studios and writers has been unbroken and harmonious. From the keystone cops approach to their craft, it would be a lot easier to believe that the CGA (Continuity Guild of America) was out on strike most of last year. Though, in fairness, continuity failure is often blamed for simple poor directing, sloppy camera work and/or editing.
     Faux pas aside, We Own The Night is the simplest of simple three act feature films. Act One: We meet characters, get a bit of back story, and the father and son cop team try to enlist the support of their nightclubbing son for an undercover drug operation.
     Act Two: Phoenix opts out of drug bust and Russian Mafia (not knowing his family are all cops) tries to recruit him into drug business. Wahlberg leads police raid on nightclub and (a couple of days later) is gunned down, but not killed, for his trouble by Russians. Phoenix seeks revenge so turns from aspiring drug mule to stool pigeon; Russians find out, shit hits fan.
     Act Three: Wahlberg recovers and resumes normal police duties, Phoenix gets moved into the witness protection program and (as with every witness protection program in every film in the history of Hollywood) security is breached and Bobby Duval is shot dead. Then Phoenix gets deputised and made a cop because only he can bring down the Russian bad guys. Despite not having been though any police training, and having a potential felony drug charge hanging over his head, he gets his badge and gun. Phoenix roughs up some old night club buddies to get the low-down on the Russians and the cops find them (surprise, surprise) in the midst of commissioning “the biggest drug deal the city’s ever seen.” Cops arrive, predicable shootout ensues and mafia kingpin, who murdered Bobby Duval, escapes into fields somewhere in Queens. The eighty or ninety cops in the operation wait on the side of the field while Phoenix charges in (in broad daylight) and murders unarmed Russian. Presumably when internal affairs shows up to question all the cops on scene about shooting, they all say they saw nothing but were sure it was self-defense.
     Aside from the fact that none of these events could have transpired in a sane world, it’s an entirely plausible plot.
     Given that most of its cop shootings and failed drug busts occur under the cover of darkness, and that the cops notch up their only win in broad daylight, perhaps there might have been a better title than We Own The Night.