Some great acting and stunning suspense sequences elevate this so-so tale about a police family's complex relationship with Russian mobsters in 1980s New York.
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10/12/07
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We Own The Night (2007)
55
%
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Reviews Counted:137
Fresh:75
Rotten:62
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: Bland characters, clichéd dialogue and rickety plotting ensure We Own The Night never lives up to its potential.
Theatrical Release:Oct 12, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $28,563,179
Synopsis: Director James Gray (THE YARDS) posits two distinctly different brothers--Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) and Bobby Grusinsky (Joaquin Phoenix)--as the central characters in this crime-infested thriller.... [More]
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall
Director: James Gray
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Reviews for We Own The Night
If Gray had put as much effort into his script as he puts into [several] scenes, he might have made a film to rival Scorsese or Cronenberg. As it is, he’s tugging mightily on their coattails.
10/12/07
Fans of gritty, intense cop films won't be bothered by... significant flaws; others will have the pleasure of seeing accomplished actors dig into meaty roles.
10/12/07
File this cop family drama movie under films-we-never-need-to-see-again.
10/12/07
A diverting enough time-wasting thriller.
10/12/07
Gray's craftsmanship is admirable, which shows some old-fashioned reverence for the triangulated composition of Scene, Character, Plot and avoids, by and large, the snazzy edits and visual bling that pass for a cinematic imagination these days.
10/12/07
God knows [writer-director Gray] has skill and integrity, but perhaps it's time to acknowledge that he could use script help.
10/12/07
Top CriticWahlberg, unfortunately, is over the top, and not in the good way he was in Scorsese's The Departed.
10/12/07
Top CriticThis is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency.
10/12/07
Top CriticThe whole thing is so generic, so been-there-before, that I spent most of it asking myself nitpicking questions.
10/12/07
Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg do a lot of the talking, great mumbling. Two of the movies' master mutterers, they supply a double tour-de-force of indifference to enunciation, steamrolling the English language until it sounds like some other dialect.
10/12/07
Top CriticThe plotting is so rickety that the action hinges on suspicions roused by a character carrying a cigarette lighter and matches.
10/12/07
[The movie] shines as it illuminates that haze of conflicting emotions and motivations within the confines of a powerful police thriller.
10/12/07
We Own the Night is a bloody, passionate melodrama, self-consciously Shakespearean -- or Biblical, or Greek, take your pick of atavisms -- in its intentions.
10/12/07
Top CriticSo meticulous, observant and generous in the details, that I was almost saddened to see the story start up in earnest and inevitably limit the film's scope.
10/12/07
Gray really does offer nothing new here. We get the same old statement of blood being thicker than watered-down business associations.
10/11/07
It's a sensational picture, best received by minds open to generous cinematic brush strokes of right and wrong...undeniably thrilling on primitive, fist-clenching level.
10/11/07
It couldn't have taken seven years to write a screenplay this leaden and uninspired. Surely something like this could be churned out in a weekend.
10/11/07
I gradually found myself respecting and admiring the film and its creator, writer-director James Gray, for its willingness to observe the rules of classic cinema construction without coming across as too self-consciously retro for its own good
10/11/07
Whomever owns it they can keep it cause we've all got better things to do at night than to see a virtually unconscious film that makes Johnny Dangerously look like Angels with Dirty Faces.
10/11/07
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