Beyond the Multiplex

Is "We Own the Night" a rip-roaring shoot-'em-up or an ambiguous, subversive saga? Plus: Michael Caine and Jude Law get sadomasochistic in "Sleuth."

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg) and Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) in "We Own the Night"

Oct. 11, 2007 | When I first saw James Gray's gritty New York cop thriller "We Own the Night" at Cannes earlier this year, I was dimly aware it was a movie that didn't surrender all its secrets on first viewing. Set in the coke-and-murder Gotham of the late '80s, as the Russian mob is beginning to supplant the city's traditional mafia organizations, this tremendously crafted crime drama with an A-minus Hollywood cast -- Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes -- struck many viewers as a strange choice for the world's most prestigious film festival. There was even scattered booing at the first press screening, and while that's a known and unpredictable hazard of Cannes, it can nonetheless have a long-term ripple effect on a movie's reputation. (See also "Marie Antoinette.")

If some viewers saw "We Own the Night" as an old-fashioned cops-and-robbers, good vs. evil morality fable, or even as a patriotic paean to the Reagan-era "war on drugs" -- and many more are likely to see it that way -- does that mean that's what it is? We travel here into murky areas of aesthetic theory, like the question of artistic intention and a work's unknowable future reception. Is it really possible, as Gray suggests in our conversation, for a film to succeed on two apparently contradictory levels at once, as a "popcorn, pulpy" shoot-'em-up as well as a story that is morally ambiguous and even subversive? (Listen to a podcast of my conversation with Gray here.)

For now, let's just say that "We Own the Night" is an intriguing blend of mainstream audience-pleaser and a more subtle, even intellectual agenda. There's a peculiar undertow of grim determinism beneath Gray's mythic tale of rival brothers joining forces to defeat a common enemy, and it's more than a matter of neo-noir style or fashionable nihilism. Gray's protagonist, Bobby Green (Phoenix), begins the story as a hedonistic rebel, running a hot Brooklyn nightclub for the mob. But blood is apparently thicker than cocaine, and more powerful than his hot Latina girlfriend (Mendes). When manhood calls, Bobby must undertake a long and painful journey back toward his dad (Duvall) and brother (Wahlberg), both heroic cops and upstanding family men. Is this story about a man who is embracing righteousness, or a man imprisoned by destiny? That's up to you.

This week's deluge of fall releases also brings us the intriguing (and intriguingly botched) remake of the campy two-hander "Sleuth," via writer Harold Pinter, director Kenneth Branagh and stars Jude Law and Michael Caine, along with a loopy and adventurous magical-realist fable made in Mongolia and a sly documentary about the crop that is distorting America's agricultural economy and making us so damn fat. Also this week, but not covered in depth: New Yorkers can catch the rerelease of "La Chinoise," one of the most baffling, maddening and hilarious films in the entire baffling, maddening, etc., career of Jean-Luc Godard. Will it provoke a new college-campus wave of Maoist terrorism? (Stephanie Zacharek reviewed Anton Corbijn's terrific "Control," about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, earlier this week, and you can read my interview with Valerie Harper about her one-woman film, "Golda's Balcony," on Friday.)

"We Own the Night": The rise of the Russian mob, by way of Clint Eastwood, Francis Coppola, Shakespeare and Louis Althusser
During the course of my lunch with James Gray, he confessed that he was still a virgin when he went to college (and showed me his freshman ID from USC to prove the point). He called himself a poor husband and father because he's a workaholic filmmaker whose wife is at home with two babies (aged 21 months and 4 months). He told me his cholesterol is "through the roof" and complained that the producers of his forthcoming film subjected him to thorough medical testing. "I'm Jewish," he said. "I'm not meant for this. I'm genetically selected to sit on my ass and be an accountant: 'Morris, the numbers just don't add up.'"

Despite all that, Gray does not come across as the supporting character in a Woody Allen film. He's an exceedingly calm and thoughtful guy who's trying to do something almost unknown in contemporary Hollywood: make old-fashioned, populist movies with hidden dimensions and some intellectual heft. After his modest indie hit "Little Odessa" and the follow-up "The Yards," Gray has attracted a modest following as a chronicler of unfashionable, outer-borough New York reality.

With major studio backing and Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in the leading roles (both of which feature some unexpected twists), "We Own the Night" should be Gray's breakthrough to popular success, and a new level of access to stars, power and money. But as Gray is well aware, an artist or entertainer (pick your noun) who achieves that also surrenders control of his work to some extent. I see "We Own the Night" as a tremendously crafted genre thriller whose surface is at war, so to speak, with its subtext. This film is likely to reach a mass audience that will see it as an uncomplicated story about "traditional values," like the importance of family and the heroism of cops. And as they say in Hollywood, the audience is never wrong.

Gray has yet to see David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises," the other Russian mob movie of the season, but says manfully, "I love Cronenberg, and I've heard great things." The films are quite different in terms of tone and thematic preoccupations, but there's no doubt that both are revisionist updates of the thriller genre. Both movies also feature a dark-hearted but grandfatherly mob boss -- played by Armin Mueller-Stahl in "Eastern Promises" and Moni Moshonov in "We Own the Night" -- and both characters, Gray concedes, are almost certainly based on the same legendary real-life figure.

Gray had just attended a preview screening of his film that left him unsettled. Not because people didn't like his movie, but because they did. "You make your movie and you have certain things you want it to be about," he said, "and people respond to something you didn't intend at all. They can love it, but it can still be very disturbing."

Next page: "Genre gets us stuck"