We Own the Night

Smuggling in a fraught, mythic tale of destiny and blood ties under the old-fashioned clothing of a ’70s-style crime drama, James Gray’s first film since ‘The Yards’ (2000) broods with dark, tantalising subtleties. Trapped again and again in God’s-eye cut-backs, long shots and stretched takes, coked-up nightclub manager Joaquin Phoenix finds himself forced to reunite with his cop family (Mark Wahlberg as his brother, Robert Duvall as his deputy-chief dad) in the late-’80s NYC drugs war. But Gray shapes his classical framework too close to both contrivance and convention too often, leaving his intriguing thematic payload lost in murky, indistinct drama. Eva Mendes completes a volley of evolving, insular performances that mesh perfectly with the fading shadows and ambient noise of Gray’s sombre neo-noir stylings. Yet still, for all the heat, the slow-burn simply never ignites. Shame, because Gray was achingly close to something here. A desperate violence and urgency spills out in the film’s flash-point set-pieces – not least a sensational car chase, shot through a windscreen, hammering rain and a blur of fear.