Movie Reviews
We Own the Night a gloomy crime drama
We Own the Night movie review by efrain gomez
A Gloomy “Night”
1988: A time of “Miami Vice” and the proliferation of cocaine. OK, so I don’t remember much of 1988 besides wrist-slap bracelets, Kool-aid and Ninja Turtles, but apparently the New York Police Department night watch was in full force then, whooping on the bad guys.
The new movie “We Own the Night” gets its title from a 1980s-era NYPD street crimes unit motto. Joaquin Phoenix (”Walk the Line”), Mark Wahlberg (”Shooter”) and veteran actor Robert Duvall come together to make a movie that looks like it could be the New York version of “The Departed,” but I left the theater disappointed and slightly confused.
“We Own the Night” follows Bobby Green (Phoenix), manager of the popular nightclub El Caribe in Brooklyn. He’s also son, brother and friend to a whole gaggle of distinguished New York cops. It’s 1988 and Bobby’s life is one big party of booze and drugs until his brother’s investigation targets a Russian drug dealer who’s operating out of the El Caribe. Bobby has to sober up and make tough choices, because in the big battle between the good guys and bad guys, he must pick a side.
It seemed interesting, dramatic and dark, but it really ended up being a moody, muddled film with elements similar to “The Godfather” and “The Departed,” yet inversed and only half-cool (does that make any sense?).
The focus here is two “family businesses” on either side of the law, but unlike “The Departed” there aren’t any plot-twisting, double-crossing rats sprinkled about. (Well, unless you count the rat-like Eva Mendes, Bobby’s annoying, minor-complication girlfriend).
There aren’t many predictable moments in the film, which I liked, because it made the story more grounded and real. This grittiness is filmed with shaky, docudrama camera work that heightens the tension in at least three blood-pumping scenes. At times, the camera captures brutal violence, totally chaotic, unglamorized and even from a first-person point of view. But other than that, the movie sort of gloomily drifts along.
In the end, it becomes a mild salute to not only the NYPD but also our “boys in blue” all around. A testament to family, choices, and the sworn duty to “serve and protect.” All this, as the chief of police (Duvall) says in the movie, without ever “playing in the dirt.”
[...] comedy-dramas. Joaquin Pheonix and Mark Wahlberg will probably draw big crowds, but “We Own the Night” seems a little moody and dramatic. And it might remind audiences of the “The [...]