We Own The Night

James Gray set out to make a dark, gritty crime drama. He wanted it to be dark, moody, intelligent, thought-provoking, intense, and memorable. He only missed on 6 of those traits.

We Own the Night (2007) tells the story of Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix), the black sheep of the Grusinsky family. Bobby is the club-running drug-hazed brother/son of 2 high-powered members of the 1988 New York Vice Squad. His father Burt (Robert Duvall) and brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) take turns running the vice squad. To distance himself, Bobby has changed his last name.

Bobby is living a self-indulgent life with his girlfriend Amada Juarez (Eva Mendes) and his close friend Jumbo Falsetti (Danny Hoch). He runs a club for the Russians and spends his time getting high.

Meanwhile, Joseph is promoted to run the Vice squad. Bobby and Amada show up to his party high, leave early during the moment of silence for yet another fallen NYPD officer, killed by the Russian drug mob. Not too long after, Joseph leads a raid on El Caribe, the club Bobby is running. Bobby and a Russian hood are arrested. The hood kills himself rather than talk, Bobby and Joseph fight.

Later that Thanksgiving night, Joseph is shot by a hooded gunman, Burt resumes that role. Bobby is approached by Vadim Nezhinski (Alex Veadov), the strong-arm face of the Russian mob and the man Joseph had been after during his raid, to be a distributor. In the conversation Vadim is very up-front about not only having arranged the attempted slaying of Joseph but of his plans and ability to kill several other important city officials.

Bobby then tries to help the cops to get revenge on Vadim. He and policeman Michael Solo (Antoni Corone) set up an undercover search for Vadim's distribution house which ends disastrously. In the shootout he breaks several bones.

This gets Bobby and Amada moved to a safe house. When she sneaks out to visit her mother their hiding location is revealed. This results in them needing to be moved. During the move Vadim's organization kills several policemen including Burt.

This inspires Bobby to become a policeman which in turn causes Amada to leave him for not consulting with her. Like most other plot developments, this makes no sense, but...whatever. How bizarre are some of the plot developments?

In the end Bobby finally puts together the pieces, and he leads the police when they raid the big incoming drug shipment, wipe out the Russian mob and Bobby is the hero. He directs experienced policemen despite being a probationary officer not even given a gun. Uhm...okay.

At the end of the movie Joseph is moving to administration since flashbacks keep him from being effective in the field and Bobby is rapidly advancing in rank over men with years of service.

The story had tremendous potential. Family conflict, moral questions regarding drug use, a scary opponent in the Russian mob, themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal...but it is poorly written and horribly executed. Take the sub-plot of Amada for example.

She loves her mother and Bobby. She is very supportive of him. She wants to get to know his family. They party together a lot, always laughing, smiling, and high. She wants to spend more time with him, but he keeps leaving her to run the club, visit his family, visit his patron. She stays with him. When they go into hiding she stays with him. She takes an interest in his life. But as they are high less often they smile and laugh. She still tries to be part of her life but he more or less ignores her. When she leaves it makes no sense within the film...only from the morality play standpoint. Bobby moves from happy and worthless to miserable and a good, effective cop...without a woman. It could have made sense. It could have been a great story arc. Instead, when she left it leaves you scratching your head and saying, "Huh? What happened?"

The camera work is abysmal. It makes the action hard to follow, has no visuals that stand out, and the choice of film stock was, at best, interesting...and could have been better. This seriously had independent film production values. Even worse, it spent a lot of money to get them. Why? It did not add to the "feel" of the movie, it was inconsistent.

The audio was equally bad. When you notice the audio for being annoying and distracting, that is not a good thing. It also did not make sense. For example, in the shoot-out at the drug house it suddenly transported you to what Bobby was hearing...or rather, the ringing in his ears preventing him from hearing. In the car chase the audio was very muted and bizarre...both the motivated sounds and unmotivated sounds were difficult to identify or relate to what you were seeing on the screen.

Even the acting fell short. With a cast involving Robert Duvall and Mark Wahlberg you figure you are in good shape. But Duvall seems wooden and his acting doesn't ring true. Wahlberg does a solid job but Phoenix is heinously bad. Early in the movie he is stiff and whispers to display being high. Late in the movie he is stiff and whispers to display sorrow. In the middle part of the movie he is stiff and whispers to display confusion. I could not tell the difference between his "high" mode and his "valedictorian of the police academy" celebration speech. It was an appallingly bad performance.

Eva Mendes seemed to be there explicitly so they could see how many hair styles she could look good in during the movie. If she was in 31 scenes then she had 31 different hairstyles. It was amazing. Not entertaining enough to save the movie, but certainly awe-inspiring.

In short, this movie is a probable Oscar winner since it was easily the most boring movie I have seen this year. Save 2 hours and change of your life and 20 bucks...go buy the Transformers DVD or something. Or watch Heat (1995), a dark, gritty, brutal, bloody crime drama with an unsatisfying end, much like We Own the Night, but at least it is interesting on the way there...or watch The Transporter (2002) for a movie about redeeming the hero. Just don't waste your time on this one.

The Heartbreak Kid

Ben Stiller has a history of making extremely funny movies. The Meet the Parents franchise presented us with 2 of the funniest movies of the last decade as did There's Something About Mary (1998). On the other hand, he has also participated in the less spectacularly received Mystery Men (1999) and Zoolander (2001).

The Heartbreak Kid (2007) will be closer to one of the latter. There are some screamingly hilarious scenes...but they are too few and far between. While waiting for the laughs we are subjected to some excruciatingly painful scenes.

Heartbreak follows the story of (theoretically) lovable loser Eddie Cantrow (Ben Stiller), a guy who never met a commitment he wasn't afraid of. When his best friend Mac (Rob Corddry) mocks him relentlessly...as does his dad Doc (Jerry Stiller), he jumps at the chance for a relationship with Lila (Malin Akerman).

After a 6 week courtship flies by in a montage of them kissing and ignoring everything going on around them, they marry and take off for Mexico. On the trip Lila is bright and full of life. She sings every song that comes on the radio as Eddie gets more and more irritated by her cheerfulness.

He is also turned off by her aggressive and wild sexuality when they get a motel room.

In fact, pretty much everything about her starts to irritate him. And some of his actions and words start to irritate her. It comes to a head when he tries to get her to put on sunblock instead of mineral oil. She burns extremely badly which allows him to have a series of solo adventures involving Miranda (Michelle Monaghen) and her family.

He and Miranda fall madly in love. Complications arise. She goes home, he gets divorced, he turns into a stalker, he moves on, she comes to find him for the big surprise twist at the end.

It is a funny premise (and is a remake of Charles Grodin's 1972 The Heartbreak Kid) with room for some interesting social commentary that falls apart. Too much of the comedy comes from hearing Jerry Stiller use horrific terms for women and their "uses" and too little from actually funny stuff. The talents of Stiller, Carlos Mencia as Uncle Tito, and everyone else in the cast are wasted.

Eddie and Miranda never seem like they belong together and Lila is actually a sympathetic character at times.

This movie could have been epically hilarious. As is, it is pretty much a waste of popcorn eating time.

Can you smell what the Rock is cookin'?

Today my husband and I caught the Rock's (A.K.A Dwayne Johnson's) new flick, "The Game Plan."

The movie started out showing NFL Quarterback Joe Kingman's (Dwayne Johnson) bachelor lifestyle. It was clear early on that this man was the life of the party, but also very lonely, as his only real friend was his pet Bulldog, Spike. His lonely days ended when he discovers he's a father by his daughter showing up at his doorstep. What follows is incident after incident of the Rock trying to adjust to his new role as father. We watch him go from macho man to a father who's willing to put his daughters needs first. Somewhere in the middle an unexpected love interest pops up and romance ensused. Throw in a plot twist at the end I wasn't expecting, and overall it was a good flick. During one scene, I even shed real tears. The only thing lacking is that the real heart of the movie doesn't show up until the last 45 minutes. So although you are entertained, you don't really care about the characters until the movie is almost over.

My rating, a good family flick. And what female wouldn't enjoy 2 hours of watching the ROCK.