Rating 7/10

“We Own The Night” is a clichéd, retread of crime movies that have been reproduced countless times with the same results.

There is nothing new or original and the two hour runtime could have very well be condensed into a script for “Law and Order.”

However, this tired, by-the-book genre of “criminals versus cops” is satisfying and entertaining, and will suffice the viewers appetite.

The year is 1988 and Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) is a manager of one of the hottest clubs in Brooklyn. The club is a way to generate revenue and business for the Russian mob, whom Bobby is very loyal to.

When his police officer brother (Mark Wahlberg) and father (Robert Duvall) ask him to keep an eye out for anything “suspicious,” Bobby is torn between the family that accepts him for who he is and the family who considers him to be a black sheep.

This is the second collaboration between filmmakers James Gray, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, who have all previously collaborated on 2000’s “The Yards.”

Unlike this predecessor, their current effort is a much more fine-tuned and mature outing.

The film is like a theatrical play in the sense that there are three very different, very important acts that all have an impact on the film as a whole. There are no big plot twists as every event that happens is calculated and has incredible ripple effects on the rest of the movie.

Phoenix’s follow-up performance to “Walk The Line” is stunning and may be one of the finest of his career.

The most surprising element of the film was an absent Wahlberg. He plays a more human version of his character in “The Departed,” but his on-screen time is limited and unjustified.

Gray, who’s made three films in the last fifteen years, captures an amazing car chase scene that rivals classic scenes in “The French Connection” and “Ronin.”

It will have the viewer at the edge of their seat for the incredible realness and tense aura that translates off of the screen.

This film is a gritty, violent study of human nature, but it’s been done too many times before. If this film was made in the ‘70s and starred Charles Bronson, then it may have been considered innovative and original.

Although “We Own The Night” is a movie in a genre where there are so many better films, it is still an enjoyable film that oozes machismo in a time in cinema where movies strictly for males are almost slim to none.

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