We Own The Night

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: October 12th, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall, Alex Veadov 

Directed by: James Gray (The Yards)

Premise: At the height of a bloody 1980's struggle between New York city police and a Russian mob that targeted law officers and their families, the NYPD hung "We Own the Night" banners in precinct houses and stepped up their efforts.

[Kal]

This looks good... but the fucking trailer spoils THE WHOLE MOVIE. I like the poster.

[w/o horse]

It's the best second tier film of the year, and has one of the best scenes of the year period.  I wouldn't raise your expectations, but I would make the trip to the theater.

Spoilers


I won't even spell it out for people who might scroll this way but the surprise near the beginning (the shooting) should have been absolute.  That would have been huge balls.  The beginning is slow and the script is pretty nonsensical all around (honorary cop?) but from the cocaine workshop on the filmmaking is undeniably talented.  The car chase in the rain is an amazing scene.

[Kal]

I agree with that. And I really enjoyed it. Joaquin Phoenix is great as always.

[Pwaybloe]

I saw this last night, and I thought this was a fantastic movie.  Exceptionally well done for a genre movie that could have easily spiraled in the beginning. 

SPOILERS
Easily this movie could have been a disaster.  Essentially I thought the movie was going to go in the direction of Joaquin Phoenix's character siding with the drug dealers and thus battling his brother and father in the streets.  It went a different direction, thankfully, which pleasantly surprised me.  I don't have a lot of time so a couple of things to note: 1) Mark Wahlburg's character was great and made a difference in the movie, 2) the car chase scene is probably the best I have seen maybe ever.
END SPOILERS

I wish I could discuss it more if I had the time, because it exceeded my expectations.  Highly recommended.

[MacGuffin]

I'll agree with horse's assessment. It begins tempid, but it slowly builds and the tension is laid on thick. The characters are fleshed out and not one-demensional, especially Phoenix's, who is dealing a lot with right and wrong and which family to side with. It's a great performance. The only down was Mendes's character took a turn to cliche-land.

[Pozer]

admin-edited so you have a chance to stop reading before reading a spoil.

i thought the WHOLE MOVIE took a turn to cliche-land.  and

*spoil*

Joaquin becoming a cop real quick then going balls out into the smokey field to kill the bad guy

[Pwaybloe]

The way I thought about this movie was that it was an Americanized version of a Chinese action movie.  Typically, Chinese action movies follow specific rules and style and ultimately lead to the same resolutions.  What you may consider to be a cliché, I consider it to be part of the genre film.  Genre films deal with the same subjects and resolutions, but vary in style and substance.  The style and substance of WOTN is what won me over.  We all know how the movie will end, but how successfully does the movie manipulate us into believing that it won't follow the same rules to the end?  I guess it didn't work for you, but it did for me. 

[pete]

by the way everyone talked about the ending (especially comparing the plot to a Chinese action movie), I was bracing myself for some goofy shit, but instead, it was really good storytelling.  in retrospect it was a big jump, but the movie was able to frame it as a cop movie since the very beginning, before you even saw any action.
however, I'd recommend to y'all here two Johnnie To films, PTU and Exiled - netflix them, they both indulged in the brilliant short moments of We Own the Night.
I'll say this again though, action sequences in vintage clothing is like the way to go.  the three action trends right now are as follows:

1) "extreme" martial arts or pakour for the masses
2) pseudo-tactical, hand-to-hand stuff for the "intelligent" thrillers
3) shootouts in vintage clothing