http://www.criticsrant.com/archive/2007/10/12/WE-OWN-THE-NIGHT-Totally-Owns-The-Theater.aspx 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. en-US Critics Rant info@criticsrant.com Subtext Version 1.9.4.0 http://www.criticsrant.com/images/default_gravatar_bullhorn.png http://www.criticsrant.com/archive/2007/10/12/WE-OWN-THE-NIGHT-Totally-Owns-The-Theater.aspx 77 60 http://www.criticsrant.com/archive/2007/10/12/WE-OWN-THE-NIGHT-Totally-Owns-The-Theater.aspx#1830 alright! cant wait to see it. brokun1 http://www.criticsrant.com/archive/2007/10/12/WE-OWN-THE-NIGHT-Totally-Owns-The-Theater.aspx#1830 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:48:18 GMT