We Own the Night (2007)

  Another day, another bad period drama.  This one is set in the 1980s and tries to cover a weak plot with violence.  Sometimes that's okay but here it just doesn't work.

Bobby Green (Joachim Phoenix) is living the high life in Brooklyn.  He manages one of the hottest clubs in the borough, has a smoking hot girlfriend (Eva Mendes, who hopefully fired her agent after this), and is being groomed to take over management of an even bigger club in Manhattan.  He doesn't really speak to his family much but does show up for a reception honoring his brother (Mark Wahlberg), Joseph Grusinsky, getting a promotion to police captain.  Joe and their dad, Police Commissioner Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall), pull Bobby aside to warn him that his club is a notorious hangout for Russian gangster Vadim Nezhinsky (Alex Veadov) and also they are very disappointed in him for being such a fuck up and also using his mother's maiden name like he's ashamed of them.  Sure enough, the club gets raided and Bobby has Serious Conversations with his dad and brother again.  Joe gets his face shot off in retaliation which scares Bobby enough that he volunteers to go undercover to take down Nezhinsky. 

Look, I get it.  You show the disconnect between Bobby and his family then do the 180 when his brother is hurt because Blood is Thicker Than Water.  But it feels so laaaaaaazzzzzzyyyy.  There's no nuance, no redemption arc.  Bobby has one argument with his brother that feels like it was cribbed from better gangster movies and then decides to be an undercover cop.  There's no internal conflict.  The movie spends some time showing how welcomed Bobby is in the mob family and he drops them like they meant nothing.  He beats the shit out of his best friend (who is admittedly annoying AF) in an interrogation at the drop of a hat.  Nothing feels organic.  Part of that is Phoenix's robotic delivery but most of it is a bad script.

And let's not even get started on the waste of Mendes as an actress here.  Her character could have had some purpose but instead is a sad knockoff of Sharon Stone in Casino. 

This last one is a little weird so bear with me.  The opening credits show still photos of police performing arrests on what I assume are drug users/dealers and are no doubt meant to evoke the real-life events of the times.  However, all the arrestees seem to be people of color (they went by fairly quickly and I only watched the one time so don't quote me) and the actual film itself features no POC except for Mendes' very fetishized character.  There just seemed like a huge dichotomy between the street-level violence in the opening credits (hanging the racist optics out for another day) and the more high-level machinations occurring in the actual film. 

Don't watch this movie.  Watch Manhattan Melodrama instead.