Plot Overview
It has been seven years since the indie writer/director James Gray has made a feature film. Just like with his previous two pictures Little Odessa (1994) and The Yards (2000), Gray continues to look into the same concept of the Russian-American dynamics and relationships. We Own the Night takes place in 1988 in the mean streets of Brooklyn. Joaquin Phoenix plays Bobby Green, a manager of a hot New York nightclub, owned by the Russian emigrant Marat, who is believed to be the head of the drug trafficking in the region. In addition, his nephew Vadim is a drug dealer, who seems to perform most of his business in the nightclub. Bobby has a “neutral” position in the crowd, as he mainly spends his time overlooking the club, smiling and greeting, having good times with his friends and having sex with his hot Puerto Rican girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes). Bobby’s real last name is Grusinsky, however, and his father Burt (Robert Duvall) is the deputy chief of police, whereas his brother Joe (Mark Wahlberg) is the tough cop working under his dad. This is where things start to get complicated as fate starts calling and asks just how thick blood really is.

The Good
Gray’s movie has the right ingredients of those electrifying 1970s cop dramas. There is a great idea here that was poorly executed. There is no question that Phoenix is the star, because his transformation is the most emotional and affecting aspect of the movie. The acting is great all around, except perhaps by Mendes, who spends most of her screentime crying with no makeup on. Listen baby, I’m not here to see you cry; I’m here to see you jiggle your boobs. We Own the Night does contain few startlingly suspenseful scenes and there is a car chase sequence shot in heavy rain that is exhilarating.

The Bad
We Own the Night is too slow and dragged out at times. It takes its time setting up its complexities, which would have been perfectly fine if it wasn’t so unoriginal. This is a very familiar territory here. Most of the material is very generic that we’ve seen many times before. There is a sense of knowing of what exactly will happen to each character and how they will meet their end. The movie suffers from an unneeded melodrama and a conventional narrative, which makes the movie even more average. There are undisputable similarities to the far superior crime saga The Departed (2006), mainly due to the Wahlberg character, but let’s get real: James Gray is no Martin Scorsese.

Final Word
It is really frustrating not to entirely recommend a movie such as this one, because it was made with genuine intentions by a personal and respected filmmaker. We Own the Night wants to be a credible character-driven piece about a man who once turned his back on his family, who has to confront his past when he realizes that someone he deeply loves is in danger, but the final product is very underwhelming. If you want to see a movie about Russian mafia set in London that really gets under your skin and stays there, check out David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, which is currently playing in theatres as well.