Thursday

We Own the Night came out late last year. It stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg as brothers, and Robert Duvall as their father, in a New York of the late 1980s. Phoenix runs a night club, whilst his brother and father both work as policemen. They begin investigating his club as a place where Russian mafia are dealing drugs from. Tension inevitably rises in the family, and violence soon erupts as a drug war develops. I imagine parallels were drawn by critics between this movie and The Departed, but this film in no sense copies or imitates that one. The beginning is a little confusing and slow, but afterwards this soon picks up into a powerful drama. It's a well-made, well-performed and well-written movie. Phoenix, especially, is excellent. The director, James Gray, lets things happen without overstating them. The gunfight/car chase in the rain, with little or not music, and the rain obscuring the windscreens, was brilliant. Perhaps overall the film tried to include too much, and should have kept its scale small, but I have very little to complain about really. This is a very good movie.