Three very fine actors- Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, and Robert Duvall, with a good supporting effort by Eva Mendes- collaborate to give us a rough, ragged, but still finely tuned little period piece in We Own The Night.

Stories about 1980s cops and bad guys in New York City are usually about crooked cops and how they work with the bad guys and what a bad end they come to. This movie breaks free from the stereotype. Instead it is a somewhat Shakespearean drama about a father and his two sons. The father, played by Duvall, is the police chief. One of his sons, played by Wahlberg, is also a policeman and is high up in the ranks because of his skills and the mentoring of his admiring father. The other son, the prodigal one at that, is played by Phoenix.

The story line soon centers upon Bobby Green (Phoenix), with his girlfriend played by Mendes. Bobby didn’t follow his father into the police force. Instead, he manages a slick uptown nightclub where drug dealers ply their trade, more or less without interference from Bobby. But then his cop brother conducts a raid on the nightclub, in which Bobby is beaten and arrested. Bobby must face a decision- is he going to help the cops, or go with the drug kings.

Phoenix, Wahlberg, and Duvall all have a credible chemistry in this film which never wanes and keeps you glued to the action. You can tell they wanted to make it all real and that they sensed that they had a real opportunity in working together.

One of the weaknesses in the film, it seemed to me, was that in spite of fine acting by the leads, the dialog was pretty ho-hum from start to finish. There were no real breakouts anywhere, although it is apparent that Phoenix, whose part lends itself to it, tried. Phoenix gives an inspired performance, which we have come to expect from him. Even so, though he develops radically as a character, I was looking for a really palpable evolution in his character toward the end, but he still had the same Brando-ish sullenness he had toward the beginning. Wahlberg also has a real opportunity to show a breakout in character toward the end, when he does something we do not expect from him, but he is muted. Duvall is a rock, of course, and he stays uniformly in the gravity spot.

The film is also a bit long (117 minutes)- it could have been edited down to a shorter length, but even so I was grateful that the editors didn’t lop off the footage that set the film down easy at the end. It seems these days that if any part of a film is going to be cut, it is the ending, because it is more economical that way. But too quick an ending can really suck the energy out of many an otherwise fine film. This one stays healthy in that regard.

The action and the suspense are well above average, though. Alex Veadov plays an effective Russian Mafia-type villain in this movie. And with the three-star chemistry working so well, even occasionally tepid dialog is not that great a hindrance. If you want to see three of our best early-Twenty-First-century actors working together, make this a choice in your selection of next-to-see films. It’s different and it moves.

Four Stars/ **** / An original film review by Ed Williamson




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12