Product Description

In We Own the Night Joaquin Phoenix plays Bobby Green, a young man who has turned his back on his family, going as far as changing his last name and concealing any links he has with New York’s finest. He is the manager of the popular El Caribe, the legendary Russian-owned nightclub in Brooklyn. But Bobby is about to go head to head with his brother and father when they become the target of the Russian mob.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10070 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In We Own the Night, Joaquin Phoenix, whose eyes burn with sullen anger even when he's looking at the woman he loves, plays Bobby Green, a nightclub manager in the 1980s who gets caught between his blood family he tried to leave behind--a long line of police officers--and his chosen family of friends and business partners, who turn out to be drug dealers. His father (Robert Duvall) and brother (Mark Wahlberg) want Bobby to help their investigation, but Bobby resists--until the conflict takes a brutal turn. Writer/director James Gray wears his influences on his sleeve; he's clearly seen every movie that Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola ever made and aspires to follow in their footsteps.

The familiarity of the movie's territory dilutes its impact, but the plot of We Own the Night remains unpredictable, the performances have a clean vitality, and Gray's moody visual style brings some life to the genre. Phoenix (Walk the Line) dives into his role, sifting through layers of guilt and familial resentment; Wahlberg and Duvall play parts they've essentially played a dozen times, but do so with commitment and integrity. Also featuring Eva Mendes (Ghost Rider) as Bobby's devoted girlfriend, who questions just how much she'll have to give up for him. --Bret Fetzer

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. Joseph and Bobby inhabit two conflicting worlds in late 1980s New York, the former becoming a cop and the latter running a nightclub. Bobby spends his evenings in a den of iniquity, indulging in drugs, alcohol, and gambling, and his attractive girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes) is never far from his arm. Their two worlds meet when the father of the two men, Burt (Robert Duvall), who is also a cop, gets together with Joseph to ask Bobby for information about a patron of the club named Vadim (Alex Veadov). Vadim is the nephew of the club's owner, and also a dangerous member of the Russian criminal underworld. Bobby sides with Vadim, and the tension in Gray's brother-versus-brother potboiler reaches melting point as Joseph goes after both his sibling and his Russian foe.
Wahlberg, Phoenix, and Duvall all deliver high-calibre performances throughout, and Gray suffuses the plot with enough twists and turns to provide a few surprises. New York City is perfectly utilised as a backdrop to the action, and cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay manages to get the balance between moody, atmospheric shots and explosive action sequences just right. We Own the Night ultimately resembles an old-fashioned cop film with a little Scorsese-like drama thrown in for good measure, and is likely to gain a following among movie fans seeking retro crime thrills.

Customer Reviews

Ok for a night
This is an enjoyable film, not a ground breaker but entertaining, well acted and a very good car chase sequence. Recommended as a nights rental, feet up n a glass of wine!

Opposie Sides

"Booed at the Cannes film festival (always a sign that a movie has good energy), James Gray's pulverizing crime drama is unafraid to put its passions right out where it's easy to mock them. We Own the Night is defiantly, refreshingly unhip." Peter Travers

A movie that does not have original material, but it works in spurts. The
dark underworld of Russian crime- this is the group du jour of crime nowadays. The New York City Police Department who in the 1980's according to Roger Ebert used the 'We Own the Night" slogan of the New York police, painted on the sides of their squad cars as a promise to take back the night from the drug trade. Two members of the NYP- Robert Duval and Mark Wahlberg as father and son want to bring that drug trade down. The other brother, Joaquin Phoenix, for whatever reason, has become the manager of a club that caters to the drug crowd. At opposite ends, oh yes. Until, until, something big happens and the son Bobby Green turns to the side of the law. Eva Menedes does an admirable job playing Bobby's love interest, and this emotional tangle brings this film some real credibility.

The action in this film and in particular the car chase on a wet rainy night with fog so thick you can barely see is a raw knuckle event. The raw and grainy fear is palpable, and I can envision the fear and heart racing excitement.

"But this is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency. Scenes where a protagonist is close to being unmasked almost always work. The complexity of Bobby's motives grows intriguing, and the concern of his girl friend Armada is well-used. "We Own the Night" may not solve the question of ownership, but it does explore who lives in the night, and why." Roger Ebert

Recommended. prisrob 03-29-08

Broken Trail

The Big Hit

It's All About Love

oh brother
It's not a bad film, it's well made and acted, but it's slow, predictable and the first half is based on the ludicrous idea that no one in a neighbourhood would know that the local big shot club manager was the son of the police chief....
The second half gets better, there's a brilliant, brilliant car chase. Maybe for the first time in cinematic history you get an impression of what it would be really like if you were driving. But the ending is dull and the plodding 'blood is thicker than water' morality is, in the end, really, really boring.