We Own the Night (2007)
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Reviews Counted: 146
Fresh: 83 | Rotten: 63
Bland characters, clichéd dialogue and rickety plotting ensure We Own The Night never lives up to its potential.
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 38
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 15
Bland characters, clichéd dialogue and rickety plotting ensure We Own The Night never lives up to its potential.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 253,885
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Movie Info
Set against the backdrop of the bloody battle waged between New York City cops and the Russian mafia in the 1980s, director James Gray's period drama tells the tale of an emerging club manager whose family ties to law enforcement make him a target for the city's most dangerous criminals. Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) manages one of Gotham's hottest clubs, but being in the club scene often means turning a blind eye to blatant criminal activities. Realizing that his career -- and perhaps his life
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Cast
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Joaquin Phoenix
Bobby Green -
Mark Wahlberg
Lt. Joseph Grusinsky -
Eva Mendes
Amada Juarez -
Robert Duvall
Bert Grusinsky -
Antoni Corone
Michael Solo -
Moni Moshonov
Marat Bujayev -
Alex Veadov
Vadim Mezshinski -
Tony Musante
Jack Shapiro -
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All Critics (147) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (85) | Rotten (66) | DVD (16)
An intriguing blend of mainstream audience-pleaser and a more subtle, even intellectual agenda.
It's not surprising, but it's engaging enough that most patrons will likely cut the director some slack for the out-of-period details and convoluted plot contrivances that make the film seem at once sloppy and too neat.
[Gray's] feel for dialogue has rarely failed him, and it doesn't here.
A desperate violence and urgency spills out in the film's flash-point set-pieces - not least a sensational car chase, shot through a windscreen, hammering rain and a blur of fear.
This one hangs on the notion of fate, and once you've figured out whose fate is the central issue, the outcome -- even with those clumsy plot twists -- is fairly predictable.
As flat-footed as writer-director James Gray's script often sounds, his cops-vs.-mob tale can be strangely mesmerizing.
Director-writer James Gray makes it all seem more urgent than it has any right to feel, because he knows how to make tense, violent dramas that are soaking in mood.
This is a man's movie: gritty, macho, and lacking in grace.
If We Own the Night is flawed and somewhat choppy, it served notice that Gray, once he refined his technique, would be a force to be reckoned with in the cinema world.
Gray assumes rather than dramatizes the depths of his characters, scanning for gravitas where there are only rickety clichés
A generic thriller that aims for deeper resonance, We Own The Night is an intriguing feature, undermined by a plot that stretches credulity, yet which still manages to conform to predictable gangster flick cliché.
Although We Own the Night is never as suspenseful as it wants to be and can be a little formulaic, it never comes close to being boring, and that's something you can't say too often about movies these days.
(We Own the Night) was terribly written and just such a waste of great actors.
The pace may be a shade plodding at times, and the dialogue frequently does disservice to the subject matter. Yet the performances lift it out of the rut...
Lovers of good straightforward thrillers should find plenty to enjoy here.
It's a roller coaster, mainly because a good scene is typically followed by a bad one. For every thrill, there is a melodramatic moment that just doesn't work.
The drama gains momentum in the second half, so the film gets better, but it's never too far from cliche.
These are some of the finest actors in America, so it's no surprise that they deliver the goods and create solid, complex and accessible characters we can understand.
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Foreign Titles
- La Nuit nous appartient (FR)
- La noche es nuestra (ES)










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