Review of "We Own The Night"

If the title of the movie We Own The Night makes your nostrils arch a little, it may be because lame movie titles are as obvious to everyone except the writer as a fart smell is except to the person who did it. This move, written and directed by someone you've never heard of (James Gray) is not only poorly named, but is mournfully transparently predictable from 10 minutes in.

Before I trash it further, let me say that the film does not fail because of the main actors, who were pretty good - Robert Duvall is always a pleasure, Joaquin Phoenix has his moments of greatness (like his portayal of Commodus in Gladiator, "Am I not merciful?!"), Mark Wahlberg is well established as a likeable guy (though he frequently cast as the perpetually furrowed, simian brow, close-mouthed, imperiled, accidental unhero). The actors did their best to take a ho-hum movie concept and turn it into drama.No, this lemon has to go to the writer/director.

Aside from good triumphing over evil fairy-tale-style, the only other redeeming aspect of the film is the family portrayals, often cast in a dim, yellowish incandescent homely hue, while people are gathered around a dinner table or talking honor and duty in a creaky old New York church. Family ties were strong in the film, even when the black sheep was wandering.

OK, back to why this movie is DOA. As you are still chewing the first bite of popcorn, as if to get the obligatory sex out of the way early so we can get on with the drivel, you the viewer get to see the girlfriend (I forget her name) horny as all getout, twisting and whimpering on a couch with her hand down the front of her pants, beckoning her man, who replaces her hand with his own. Now the microphone is recording the slapping spit sound and heavy nasal breathing. I'm uncomfortable with this, not because I am made of granite, but because this is as phony as manikin porno. Its salacious, perfunctory, exhibitionistic and false. So, the two are revving up, buttons popping, legs in the air, and then, mercifully, interruptus by someone at the door. Of course, the guy leaves her to attend to business.

The obligatory grinding sex scene in a movie of non-stop obligatory tripe. People die on cue, survive on cue, make unlikely discoveries, experience psychological evolution in seconds. This formulaic narrative path is more well-beaten than the Silk Road to China. The villain might as well be twirling his mustaches, which he has amply.

The one car chase scene was spectacularly dull. Honestly, if you are driving along in a high security convoy, and someone pulls up beside you and stretches a SHOTGUN out the window in your direction, you might have the sense to either speed up or slow down. But no, the police commissioner didn't do that, and so he got shot.

I dont have the strength to go on. See Children of Heaven if you want to feel something.