We Own the Night: Critic Reviews

Gray is a far better director than he is a writer. He's got the talent to make great movies. He just needs to stop trying to.

We Own the Night is a bloody, passionate melodrama, self-consciously Shakespearean -- or Biblical, or Greek, take your pick of atavisms -- in its intentions.

It is a little cumbersome with plenty of macho-sentimentalism, and the ending is frankly contrived. But go and see it for the car chase.

The theme of this absorbing crime drama centers on a simple idea: Blood is thicker than powder.

As always, Phoenix is an arresting presence on screen, but don't expect any Departed-esque fast talk from Wahlberg, who is oddly inert in a role that should crackle with brotherly ambivalence.

Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg do a lot of the talking, great mumbling. Two of the movies' master mutterers, they supply a double tour-de-force of indifference to enunciation, steamrolling the English language until it sounds like some other dialect.

Helpless with comedy, heavily reliant on coincidence, and out of step with all current cinematic vogue, We Own the Night finally resonates as a beautiful, dolorous nocturne.

This one hangs on the notion of fate, and once you've figured out whose fate is the central issue, the outcome -- even with those clumsy plot twists -- is fairly predictable.

Gray's craftsmanship is admirable, which shows some old-fashioned reverence for the triangulated composition of Scene, Character, Plot and avoids, by and large, the snazzy edits and visual bling that pass for a cinematic imagination these days.

As flat-footed as writer-director James Gray's script often sounds, his cops-vs.-mob tale can be strangely mesmerizing.

We Own the Night plays like gangbusters.

This is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency.

The story remains oddly unaffecting, and Gray's camera sense is visually lethargic outside the two big action sequences.

One of Hollywood's moldy oldies -- brothers on opposite sides of the law -- gets yet another spin in this lead-footed crime drama by James Gray.

At times solid and suspenseful, at times dopily implausible and woefully familiar.

Phoenix is unquestionably the star of the film. His journey is particularly angst-ridden, and he shows it every step of the way.

Adequately acted and flecked with the required quota of action to satisfy genre fans, pic recalls numerous good police dramas of the 1970s, but mostly in superficial ways that bring nothing new to the table.

Too slow to be a guilty pleasure and too dumb to be an innocent one, We Own the Night doesn't say a lot except We Own a Lot of Scorsese DVDs.

It would be nothing more than sturdy entertainment were it not for the presence of Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg.

Highly derivative of 1970s films. Sometimes 'good enough' just isn't good enough.

God knows [writer-director Gray] has skill and integrity, but perhaps it's time to acknowledge that he could use script help.

An intriguing blend of mainstream audience-pleaser and a more subtle, even intellectual agenda.

As cop/crime dramas go, this one offers little that's new but it takes the time to develop the characters and that's where its strengths lie.

James Gray again tackles his familiar family themes again within an overly familiar cops-gangsters genre.

Like The Yards, We Own the Night is broody to the point of anesthesia and operatic to the verge of bombast. And like its predecessor, the new film takes itself far too seriously.