We Own the Night Movie Review

We Own the Night (2007)

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Written by: James Gray
Directed by: James Gray
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Night club manager Bobby Green allies with his brother and father to stop his drug smuggling Russian boss.

Verdict
The plot makes the movie seem more simplistic and worse than it is. It started off really well with good direction and it has some solid scenes, but the story stumbled towards the end. It's nothing by and large we haven't seen before. Drama between two brothers on opposite sides of the law is a cop movie trope. Based on the beginning I was expecting a grander ending. There are better and worse cop dramas, but if you like the genre it's worth watching.
It depends.

Review
Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) lives a carefree life managing a night club owned by a Russian. He uses his mother's maiden name to distance himself from his police captain brother Joe (Mark Wahlberg), and police chief father Burt (Robert Duvall). When Bobby shows up to his father's retirement party, Joe wants to use Bobby to infiltrate the Russian crime organization linked to the night club. Dear old dad pushes the drug rhetoric, urging Bobby to pick a side.
Joe raids the club without telling Bobby which increases their friction, an arrested Russian commits suicide, and Joe is shot by the Russians in retaliation. I wondered if Wahlberg was out of the movie already, but he's not.
It felt like the movie was building to something big. The Russians threaten Bobby to push their product or they will kill his father. Bobby agrees to help the cops, and while the police has informants that wear a wire, the way this movie depicts it feels strange. I never fully bought that Bobby would go all in to help the cops. In the beginning of the movie he has a real disdain for the police.

We Own the Night - Tepid addition to the cop genre.

The standout sequence in this movie is the car ambush. This is a standout scene in the genre. Bobby is being moved to a new safe house. The scene occurs from Bobby's point of view, as he wonders where the police car behind then went to a car pulling beside them and firing at the driver. Bobby jumps into the front seat and he sees a gun protruding from the car in front of him shooting at the other police car. It's a well directed scene aided by the singular point of view and the sound mix.

With all that has happened, Bobby wants to join the police force. It seems like a crazy reaction from someone who was apathetic previously. If he's joining to avenge his family why wouldn't he go vigilante?
The typical trope in cop movies is that when an officer's family is harmed or killed the lieutenant tells him to take a leave of absence. In this movie the cops recruit the revenge seeking Bobby and can't sign him up fast enough. They let him skip ALL training and the police academy, and not only put him on a mission to raid a drug buy but make him the leader of the mission. They give him a shot gun too and then turn him loose. The movie should have addressed this better because I didn't buy it.

Bobby staying as an informant or going vigilante makes more sense.  The ending is underwhelming. My reaction was, "That's it?" He finally does go to the police academy and comes out as a lieutenant. How? I could see him joining the police at the end of the movie as the final scene, but this movie mishandled the last half of the movie.

The score and sound mix is really good. Phoenix did a great job and I really liked Wahlberg in a subdued role.

It feels like a mix of Killing Them Softly (2012), The Drop (2014), and Pride and Glory (2008). Unfortunately, I'd recommend all of those ahead of We Own the Night.