cssoliveira Very shortly, this is a movie that makes points on the cast and that's all. Very predictable story, boring minutes. With lot's of sequences that doesn't make sense.

Martin Bradley The theme of brothers on opposite sides of the law is nothing new in movies so if you are going to make another movie on the subject you better make it a good one. Thankfully James Gray's "We Own the Night" is very good indeed. This time it's the Russia mafia who are the bad guys and Joaquin Phoenix is the brother who is caught up with them. The 'good' brother, Mark Wahlberg, is a New York cop, (the title, 'We own the night' is the motto of the New York police force), and when he's gunned down, Phoenix changes sides.It's a smart, old-fashioned movie that, minus the sex, swearing and extreme violence, wouldn't have disgraced Bogie or Cagney back in the day and Phoenix in particular is splendid in his role. There's also a very good performance from Robert Duvall as their father, who also happens to be a cop while Joaquin Baca-Asay's location photography of, mostly night-time New York, is outstanding. See it.

coolhandluke1983 You wouldn't have thought that a movie with Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Robert Duvall and even Eva Mendes could actually produce such impassioned and wooden performances. But the writing and the plot are just so bad I can forgive them for never rising to any level even approximating competence. In order to revive themselves they resort to pantomime-like (couldn't use a real word because this review doesn't have a decent dictionary) over-acting but then as Gray wrote and directed this stiff melodrama, again forgiveness for the actors. Thank god I didn't pay money for this. I felt ripped off even investing 2 hours of my time in this clichéd nothingness. And now I have to blah the rest of this to fill out the stupid ten line minimum when I could have reviewed (there's that inadequate IMDb dictionary making me change a perfectly complete word again) it in two damn words... "It's bad", or even just one... "BAD"

TheFilmGuy1 This is a film that I wanted to like, but just didn't quite do it to me. It's a fairly basic plot that's redeemed by a few really good sequences. There's also some great performances which help it, but it doesn't live up to what it could have been.The story is about two brothers, one who's a cop and the other who runs a nightclub and is involved with some criminals. A series of events causes the one brother to choose between his lifestyle and his police family members. The big issue is that it doesn't really give us anything original. It hits a lot of the plot points you would expect a movie like this to have, which is disappointing. It also feels really slow, but not in a good way. It just seems like they could have showed us what they wanted to show but in a more time efficient way.I wanna talk about the three sequences I liked the most, because these scenes really impressed me and just made me feel that the rest of the film was lacking. The first sequence is the drug house scene. While what occurs during it is mostly cliché, there is some crazy action towards the end that impressed me. Then comes the car chase. It's filmed from within the car essentially looking from Joaquin Phoenix' characters point of view. It's pretty tense and has not music, which makes it feel more real. The only issue is that there's something not visually right with it. What might that be? It was apparently filmed during a sunny day, and they then digitally made it stormy looking and rainy, giving it a slightly unreal look which takes away from it. Regardless, it's a good scene. Finally, my favorite sequence is the whole end shootout. There some stuff involving a field of tall bushes which makes for some intense moments, and it really looks good. Sadly, the rest of the film looks and feels pretty uninspired, aside from these three sequences.This is a film that is in need of some more creativity. Only those few sequences I mentioned feel like the director had some kind of creative ideas, but the rest is filmed so basic that it takes away greatly. Some people might be able to look past it's flaws, but I personally wanted more from it.