We Own the Night

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Move over, Tony Soprano. The Italian Mafia is out, and Russian mobsters are in. Or so it seems, with this current film coming hot on the heels of the excellent "Eastern Promises" set in London's Slavic underworld.

A powerful character-driven police drama, "We Own the Night" (Columbia/2929) might almost be viewed as a hybrid of that film and "The Departed," with which it shares some thematic elements, not to mention one of its stars, Mark Wahlberg.

The setting is not Boston, but 1980s New York. Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) is the pleasure-loving, drug-taking manager of a Studio 54-type club, El Caribe. He also has an attractive girlfriend, Amada (Eva Mendes), a good-hearted party girl who proves remarkably resilient when the going gets tough.

Unknown to the club's denizens, who include affable lug Jumbo (Danny Hoch) and the avuncular Russian owner Marat Bujayev (Moni Moshonov) and assorted mobsters with whom he mingles comfortably, Bobby is, in fact, the son of police chief Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall) and the brother of Joseph (Wahlberg), a rising member of the force. The film's title derives from the New York Police Department's motto.

When Joseph raids the club, hoping to snare Bujayev's nephew, Vadim (Alex Veadov), Bobby is tossed in jail, driving a larger rift between him and Joseph.

But when, in retaliation, Joseph is gravely wounded by the mob, Bobby's fraternal affections are rekindled. Learning that there's a hit out on their father, he agrees to go undercover.

Bobby's identity is soon discovered, and he and Amada must go undercover. As the narrative progresses, Bobby's loyalties to the force and his true decency come ever to the fore. It's a familiar theme, but well done.

Writer-director James Gray sustains a taut, tragedy-drenched mood, the action secondary to the human drama, which is not to say the sequence where Bobby infiltrates a drug stash house and especially a rain-drenched car chase aren't exciting.

Gray has pointed to parallels with Shakespeare's "Henry IV," with Bobby much like the rabble-rousing Prince Hal transformed by circumstances, the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, and the Old Testament's Joseph (for whom Wahlberg's character was named), to which we might add the parable of the prodigal son.

Performances are exemplary, with fine work from Wahlberg and Phoenix (they both produced as well). Phoenix is truly outstanding as his character must transform from weak-willed wastrel to responsible cop, even at the loss of some of his humanity.

The narrative has an admirable gravitas, so even the revenge killing that comes near the end, troublesome from a moral perspective, makes a sobering dramatic point and seems not actually condoned by Gray's script.

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The film contains sporadic but strong violence, rough language, some crude expressions and profanity, vigilante killing, some grisly crime images, drug use, sexual encounter and upper female nudity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops