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“We Own the Night” is an epic emotional drama in the guise of a crime thriller. The cops-and-coke-dealers part of the story has several great, scary sequences and some very predictable plot developments.
But the film’s most impressive and explosive moments are personal, between relatives or lovers who care deeply for one another but are just too set on taking their lives in opposing directions. There’s a lot of violent tragedy here, but the movie’s real strength lies in its charged, tortured and very-well-worked-out relationships.
Writer-director James Gray brings disturbing visual ingenuity to standard action scenes such as a car chase and a dope factory raid. But his real interest clearly lies in characters, and the more stress they have to cope with, the better.
As Bobby Green, a fun-loving nightclub manager who is a disappointment to his cop family, Joaquin Phoenix goes all out, expertly running a wide gamut from charming stoned bliss through roiling resentment to wrenching grief, fear and regret.
Sure, some aspects of “We Own the Night” are pat or hard to swallow, and the film often seems grim just for grimness’ sake. But this really is a case in which superb acting and strong, surprising staging provide more than enough pleasures to balance the books.