We Own the Night
I don’t know what made me go out to see this film, I didn’t think the trailer was all that enticing, but since I usually like Robert Duvall and Joaquin Phoenix.
I’m glad I did, though. This film does something that The Darjeeling Limited tried to do, but failed, the first half of the movie was almost an entirely different movie from the second half. I won’t reveal what happened, you’re going to have to find that out for yourself, but with We Own the Night, the turning point and the second half of the film were completely engaging.
The film takes place in 1988 Brooklyn, NY and has an interesting (and surprising) cameo from former NYC mayor Ed Koch (who WAS mayor of NYC in 1988)! It was interesting seeing this film after Eastern Promises, since that film revealed to me the importance of tatoos for the Russian mafia.
After the first 10 minutes though, I realized that this film has many deep rooted connections to The Godfather (my co-favorite film, with the other co-favorite being Casablanca). Robert Duvall is in both films, but this time, instead of consigliere to the boss, he IS the boss… well, police chief, instead of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), you get Bobby Green (no, not Moe Greene, Joaquin Phoenix) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) is replaced with Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg). The twist is that instead of the prodigal son growing up in a mob family and going off and joining the military, Bobby has the opposite experience, he changes his last name, hides who his family is from everyone he knows and becomes a successful night club manager. Also, both in both films, the families of their wayward main character (Pacino/Phoenix) are suspicious of and don’t like their love interest (Diane Keaton/Eva Mendes), to the point where the families rejected them for not being the same religion/race (Keaton not being Catholic and Mendes being Puerto Rican). There are actually many more similarities between these two movies, but I don’t want to give anything else away, the film is so entertaining to watch that I don’t want to spoil the experience. I am glad that I decided to see it.
This film is worth checking out, it’s no Godfather, but it was surprisingly solid, although there were a couple of scenarios that were a bit unbelievable.
Dany
