We Own the Night
This past Sunday’s guys’ night out movie was “We Own the Night” written and directed by James Grey who is best known for having an exceedingly common name. Soon he will be known as they guy who made this movie, but to date I can’t really think of much that he’s done. The movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes, Marky Mark Wahlberg and Robert Duvall. My favorite thing about the cast in this movie is the preview where it says “Academy Award nominee Mark Wahlberg, Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix, Academy Award winner Robert Duvall and….Eva Mendes” Too bad for her. You have to hate it when you’re cast with a bunch of great actors and you find out marketing is going with the whole “look how many academy award winners we have” and you’re the only one without a nod. I think Eva should fire her agent immediately. I doubt it is at all his fault, but I think that’s how things like that get handled in Hollywood.
Before we continue with our regularly scheduled review, I have to ask, what’s with this title? Pretty lame if you ask me. The movie only served to give us the origin while making it even more lame. If the movie was about who owned the night, that would be one thing. Like if part of the story was that criminals had made going out at night unsafe and the police were taking back the night for neighborhood. It would still be a lame title, but would at least make sense, but there was nothing like that in the plot. Apparently, the title comes from some kind of slogan I saw on the badges of some of the NYPD officers. Their badges said “We Own the Night” across the bottom, but again, that doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie. It sounds like a bad Vampire movie to me.
Anyway, the movie is about Wahlberg and Phoenix who play white sheep/black sheep brothers and sons of Police Chief Robert Duvall. Wahlberg, with no funky bunch to be found, plays the good son who is rising in the police ranks taking after his Pa. Phoenix plays a guy who wears weird scarves and manages a night club where one of the flying Karamazov Brothers hangs out with the Russian mob. Eventually, the police target the mob and the club and Phoenix has to decide whether to be loyal to guys named “Jumbo” and “Vladislovikatovarovaskya” or to his family which he doesn’t care for that much and generally see him as a screw up.
I was excited to see this movie mostly because I really, really like the cast, except for Mendes who is a poor man’s Jennifer Lopez who can’t act at all. But Phoenix and Wahlberg I really like and Duvall is just never bad in anything he does. I think Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best actors of his generation, if not the best and I will likely go to see anything he’s in until that approach burns me too many times. I also like cop/organized crime dramas, so that combination made this the most highly anticipated movie of the fall for me so far except of course for “American Gangster” which has “instant classic” written all over it.
In the end this movie didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but it was still worth watching.
Things I liked:
The cast did live up to expectations. Everyone was very good except Mendes who never really established a believable or significant character despite having a role that really could have been something. In fact, because the plot was a bit ho-hum, the cast really saved and made this movie.
Three really cool scenes. First, there is a scene with Mendes walking in slow motion down the hallway with the smoke from her cigarette enveloping her exaggerated strut. Great camera work and composition. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit with the overall scene or the movie at all. It was this incredibly dramatic entrance to a casual party where people are just hanging out. It was really out of place. Too bad because it looked great. Would have been phenomenal in a music video.
Second, there is a car chase scene in the rain. You can’t see out of the windows or really ever get your bearings as to where you are or where the bad guys are or what and it keeps you tense and engaged. It is real and unnerving and the camera work and the rain make a relatively simple car chase one of the best scenes in the movie.
Third, there is a great scene where the good guys and bad guys hunt for and shoot at each other in some really tall grass of some kind. Or were they reeds? I’m not sure. They were like tall stalks of wheat except that they weren’t packed in tight like wheat or grass, but were more spread out. The effect was strange. They were loose enough that you could sort of see through them for a few feet, but tall enough and thick enough that visibility didn’t extend past that even though it seemed like it should. Plus they were blowing back and forth and constantly moving so you couldn’t tell what was wind moving grass and what was a person. It was pretty tense. It was just a simple scene, much like the car chase, but it really worked well.
I also liked the look and feel. It was set in the 1980s and every detail was addressed from clothes to cars to computers. The whole movie felt a little grey which fit perfectly with the story line since the whole movie is sort of about a cloud hanging over a situation where you know the downpour is coming and you just wait for it.
Things I didn’t like
The movie opens with the most gratuitous of sex scenes. The scene itself is actually directed well and comes across surprisingly and uncomfortably real, but it doesn’t add to the movie at all. You don’t learn anything important about the characters, it doesn’t add to the mood of the movie, you don’t care more about the people in the scene or their relationship with each other. My guess is the scene came about because they hired Mendes and then realized she couldn’t act and thought, “yeah, but she’s sexy, right? Let’s film a sex scene and toss that in so it’s not a total waste having her in this movie.” Well, it didn’t work. It was a total waste.
The story was very simple and very predictable. Not an original wrinkle in the whole movie. That’s tough to overcome. I’m not sure how movies keep getting away with this or keep convincing studios and producers that it’s ok. It’s as if, a band was pitching a song to the label’s A&R man and they said, “it’s to the same tune as ‘Hey Jude’ but we’re going to make it about a girl and call it ‘Hey June’.” I mean, no one would stand for that right? I know people cover songs and copy-cat styles in music too, but sometimes I wish in both industries the gatekeepers would say, “wait, that’s been done a thousand times, come back when you have an idea for something different.” It doesn’t have to be weird or twisted, just not what’s been done. Well, as far as the plot or story, this movie’s been done 10,000 times. They did it well this time, but there was nothing new.
Here are some other notes about the movie that might help you decide whether you want to watch it.
1. There is nudity, graphic gun violence and foul language throughout. There are also several scenes that are rather tense. It is not an especially violent movie or anything, but these items are there so if you don’t like movies that contain them, stay away from this one.
2. I would expect this movie to appeal more to men than to women as the central themes are presented entirely from the male point of view.
3. There is no real reason to not wait for video as the big screen doesn’t add enough to justify the added expense of the theater.
4. It is in the same movie genre as “The Departed” and “Carlito’s Way.”
Overall, the movie was maybe a 7 out of 10. It kept me awake and was, for the most part, well done. It just wasn’t remarkable and with that cast I was hoping for a bit more.
Before we continue with our regularly scheduled review, I have to ask, what’s with this title? Pretty lame if you ask me. The movie only served to give us the origin while making it even more lame. If the movie was about who owned the night, that would be one thing. Like if part of the story was that criminals had made going out at night unsafe and the police were taking back the night for neighborhood. It would still be a lame title, but would at least make sense, but there was nothing like that in the plot. Apparently, the title comes from some kind of slogan I saw on the badges of some of the NYPD officers. Their badges said “We Own the Night” across the bottom, but again, that doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie. It sounds like a bad Vampire movie to me.
Anyway, the movie is about Wahlberg and Phoenix who play white sheep/black sheep brothers and sons of Police Chief Robert Duvall. Wahlberg, with no funky bunch to be found, plays the good son who is rising in the police ranks taking after his Pa. Phoenix plays a guy who wears weird scarves and manages a night club where one of the flying Karamazov Brothers hangs out with the Russian mob. Eventually, the police target the mob and the club and Phoenix has to decide whether to be loyal to guys named “Jumbo” and “Vladislovikatovarovaskya” or to his family which he doesn’t care for that much and generally see him as a screw up.
I was excited to see this movie mostly because I really, really like the cast, except for Mendes who is a poor man’s Jennifer Lopez who can’t act at all. But Phoenix and Wahlberg I really like and Duvall is just never bad in anything he does. I think Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best actors of his generation, if not the best and I will likely go to see anything he’s in until that approach burns me too many times. I also like cop/organized crime dramas, so that combination made this the most highly anticipated movie of the fall for me so far except of course for “American Gangster” which has “instant classic” written all over it.
In the end this movie didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but it was still worth watching.
Things I liked:
The cast did live up to expectations. Everyone was very good except Mendes who never really established a believable or significant character despite having a role that really could have been something. In fact, because the plot was a bit ho-hum, the cast really saved and made this movie.
Three really cool scenes. First, there is a scene with Mendes walking in slow motion down the hallway with the smoke from her cigarette enveloping her exaggerated strut. Great camera work and composition. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit with the overall scene or the movie at all. It was this incredibly dramatic entrance to a casual party where people are just hanging out. It was really out of place. Too bad because it looked great. Would have been phenomenal in a music video.
Second, there is a car chase scene in the rain. You can’t see out of the windows or really ever get your bearings as to where you are or where the bad guys are or what and it keeps you tense and engaged. It is real and unnerving and the camera work and the rain make a relatively simple car chase one of the best scenes in the movie.
Third, there is a great scene where the good guys and bad guys hunt for and shoot at each other in some really tall grass of some kind. Or were they reeds? I’m not sure. They were like tall stalks of wheat except that they weren’t packed in tight like wheat or grass, but were more spread out. The effect was strange. They were loose enough that you could sort of see through them for a few feet, but tall enough and thick enough that visibility didn’t extend past that even though it seemed like it should. Plus they were blowing back and forth and constantly moving so you couldn’t tell what was wind moving grass and what was a person. It was pretty tense. It was just a simple scene, much like the car chase, but it really worked well.
I also liked the look and feel. It was set in the 1980s and every detail was addressed from clothes to cars to computers. The whole movie felt a little grey which fit perfectly with the story line since the whole movie is sort of about a cloud hanging over a situation where you know the downpour is coming and you just wait for it.
Things I didn’t like
The movie opens with the most gratuitous of sex scenes. The scene itself is actually directed well and comes across surprisingly and uncomfortably real, but it doesn’t add to the movie at all. You don’t learn anything important about the characters, it doesn’t add to the mood of the movie, you don’t care more about the people in the scene or their relationship with each other. My guess is the scene came about because they hired Mendes and then realized she couldn’t act and thought, “yeah, but she’s sexy, right? Let’s film a sex scene and toss that in so it’s not a total waste having her in this movie.” Well, it didn’t work. It was a total waste.
The story was very simple and very predictable. Not an original wrinkle in the whole movie. That’s tough to overcome. I’m not sure how movies keep getting away with this or keep convincing studios and producers that it’s ok. It’s as if, a band was pitching a song to the label’s A&R man and they said, “it’s to the same tune as ‘Hey Jude’ but we’re going to make it about a girl and call it ‘Hey June’.” I mean, no one would stand for that right? I know people cover songs and copy-cat styles in music too, but sometimes I wish in both industries the gatekeepers would say, “wait, that’s been done a thousand times, come back when you have an idea for something different.” It doesn’t have to be weird or twisted, just not what’s been done. Well, as far as the plot or story, this movie’s been done 10,000 times. They did it well this time, but there was nothing new.
Here are some other notes about the movie that might help you decide whether you want to watch it.
1. There is nudity, graphic gun violence and foul language throughout. There are also several scenes that are rather tense. It is not an especially violent movie or anything, but these items are there so if you don’t like movies that contain them, stay away from this one.
2. I would expect this movie to appeal more to men than to women as the central themes are presented entirely from the male point of view.
3. There is no real reason to not wait for video as the big screen doesn’t add enough to justify the added expense of the theater.
4. It is in the same movie genre as “The Departed” and “Carlito’s Way.”
Overall, the movie was maybe a 7 out of 10. It kept me awake and was, for the most part, well done. It just wasn’t remarkable and with that cast I was hoping for a bit more.
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