By Curt Schleier

If the production notes to WE OWN THE NIGHT are to be believed, the idea for the film started with a studio executive who suggested that director John Gray write “a cop movie with a car chase.”

It’s a typical Hollywood suit idea that drives anyone with an ounce of creativity in his or her body insane.  On the plus side, it creates a scenario ripe for satire.  He could easily have suggested: “Hey, do a Western, and put in a stagecoach.”  Or if he was really on his game, he might have said: “Do a horror movie, and put in a guy with an axe.”  That’s why they make the big bucks, because they are so, how to put this, inspirational.

I could be having so much fun with this, but Gray had to go off and spoil it for me.  He actually did what the suit asked. He wrote a cop movie with a car chase scene and made it suspenseful.  He also gave it a plot driven forward as much by its characters as by its exciting shoot-‘em-up scenes.  And he took some familiar elements from other movies and blended them into what is the nail-biting, arm-rest-holding hit of the year.

It is a classical story, in some ways biblical – Cane vs. Able, good brother vs. evil.  The bad seed is Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix).  His father Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall) is a deputy chief of the NYPD and his brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) is a captain just named head of a narcotics task force. 

The situation is rife with familial jealousies and tensions.  Because he didn’t go into the family business, Green is a disappointment to his dad.  Instead, Bobby (who changed his name to avoid association with the two cops) manages El Caribe, a Brooklyn nightclub along the lines of Studio 54, a drug-filled haven for the hedonistic.  It’s 1988 and sections of the Big Apple rotten to the core.  El Caribe is owned by a grandfatherly Russian immigrant, Marat Buzhayev (Moni Moshonov), who imports furs for a living and thinks of Bobby as family.


But Marat is not as innocent as it appears.  His nephew, Vadim (Alex Veadov) makes El Caribe his home base for a drug dealing operation the cops have not been able to penetrate.

Joseph leads a raid on El Caribe hoping to catch Vadim carrying drugs, but only gets a low-level henchman.  But the die is cast – in both senses of that word. Vadim gets Joseph’s home address and orders a hit.  Joseph survives, but barely and Green is drawn closer to his family.  When he discovers that Vadim’s hit list includes his father, Bobby agrees to go undercover to help find the drug factory.

Later, Burt is killed during a dramatic car chase sequence (straight from THE FRENCH CONNECTION), and his son Bobby vows revenge (a la THE GODFATHER).

WE OWN THE NIGHT has a great deal going for it.  The action sequences – the police raids, the car chase in the rain -- are exceptionally well done.  Gray (THE YARDS, LITTLE ODESSA), the director, shows a definite flair for filming movement.  He also does well casting.  He’s worked with Phoenix and Wahlberg before, and Duvall and Eva Mendes as Bobby’s hot girlfriend are all excellent.  Phoenix, particularly, as the conflicted brother, raises to the task without chewing up the scenery. 


It’s as a screenwriter that Gray stumbles.  The difference between a great movie and a good one is the ability to think quicker than the audience.  When Green goes undercover, he’s given a Zippo lighter with a bug in it.  Yet he continues to light his cigarettes with his matches.  If I noticed it will Vadim?  I’ll let you guess.

During a critical raid, Vadim escapes through a rear window.  Why didn’t the cops surround the building?  Perhaps that would have meant that there’d be no climatic denouement between Green and Vadim.

But good is still good.  And the film moves so quickly, it’s easy to overlook the few plot holes on the road.  This is definitely a winner.