::Great Sites::
Subscribe through Feedburner
Archives
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
Categories
|
| ||||||||
|
 |
www.vizyonmax.com With the sultry sax lines pinned to a 1970’s-1980’s-era photo montage of New York City’s finest in candid action shots of arrests, etc., We Own The Night opens well to a promise of a gritty take on mob families versus cop families. It is a story that begs to offer a treatment of the common spins of good-son vs. bad-son, family names and the ever-so-alluring bending of the lines of good and bad that we have come to revere in the Godfather’s and even the Departed’s of the (recent) past. The only thing missing were the dank inhalations of second-hand cigarette-smoke. The success of these types of films bank on inviting a certain affinity (if not admiration) and empathy toward characters for whom we are also simultaneously at least a bit wary; they are, after all, bad guys doing bad things. They have families, commitments, love-ties, squabbles, agendas, friends, homes and even a desire/necessity to maintain a outer facade of normalcy so as to hide their dirty-deeded tendencies. This much is at least hinted at in Night where its antagonists are concerned. In a 1988 New York City, the night clearly is under the hand of drug runners and the party elite in the Kochian, “How’m I Doing?” mayoral kingdom. The backdrop of the rabid crime rates of that era suits new nightclub manager Bobby Green’s (Joaquin Phoenix) lavish surroundings: big, booming clubs with drooling attendees, a hot babe on his hip and a supreme position in the city’s drug future, thanks to a cadre of Russian goons and mob bosses. Bobby is a shame and a sham to the family name and tradition, having already traded his name for his mother’s to distance himself from the sleeve-wearing goodness of his father– police-chief Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall– and brother, Captain Joseph Grusinsky [Mark Wahlberg]). The most blatant foretelling of this juxtaposition is mainly effective for it’s contrast: Bobby is interrupted in his own “party” with his scantily-clad girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes) because he is late for a police recognition “party” for his brother and father in a nearby Catholic church. The couple booze it up a bit before entering and saunter into the affair with the bravado fit for a mob boss. In an impromptu “team” meeting betwixt father-son-son, a conversation happens that seems to have happened once too many times before and it goes something like: “Bobby we know you’re a bad guy. You’re angry. Join us before we have to run you in too.” Essentially, the idea is that the police are on to the nightclub for the Russian mobbies stinking up the joint and Bobby just isn’t going to narc on anyone. As he and Amada hustle out, Joseph is center stage, receiving fatherly accolades in the limelight. We see Bobby and Amada, in a shadowy stairwell to the outer darkness, groping each other, while a bell tolls a silent remembrance for a lost police comrade in the church. It obviously tolls for the downfall of one Bobby Greene. Night pledges itself to more than one family tension: Bobby’s obvious and tender commitment to the mob boss and his family for whom it appears we can easily like. There are dinner get-togethers and children and women are whisked away to other rooms when family “business” must be discussed. That much we should expect. It also is sparked by the turmoil of a black sheep son, uncertain of his own identity, who cannot find the right “place” in the lineage of the family, now destitute of its matriarch. It is simple to own pity for Bobby while grimacing through his torturous choices that serve to only betray the ones he ultimately loves. He can’t, under the circumstances he finds himself in, fathom the terrible consequences the audience knows is possible. Somehow, brother Joe’s words only ring vacuously in his ears:
It may not be too hard to presume where the story needs him to side for the time being. Needless to say, Bobby gets in deep enough to exact an irreplaceable cost to himself, his girlfriend and his family(s). In Bobby’s first run-in with the law in the film, there is a curious tack of his being handled and processed by the police, some of whom know who he is and others being completely oblivious. The aid and favoritism (if it is that) serve to help and hurt him at the same time. There are the requisite family showdowns that push Bobby and those around him to either the good or bad of which they are capable. The performances by the Russian mobsters Nezhinsky, Lubyarsky and Buzhayev (Alex Veadov, Oleg Taktarov and Moni Moshonov) seed the bad and tantalizingly so. Their appearances are rife with an other-worldly and icy, criminal coldness that at times seems to ooze from the screen. But their luster and shape is insufficiently present overall. Unluckily so, there are the mild appeasements to the story line that turn out as minor conveniences. Some “hits” by the mob are over-precise in some cases. In others, escapes are a bit over-zealous and cinematically clever. True to the Duvall form, the chief comes across with the requisite tender demeanor with at least a few stern one-liners mainly for the wayward Bobby. Some scenes between the two bask in the emotional estrangement, but sometimes Duvall is reduced to the hoped-for weight of his no-nonsense one-linerisms. Eva Mendes, much to my expectation, was arguably squandered/relegated to trophy-chick status in the film, if not a collagenized, beauty-gimmick for use when the movie needed it. If she truly was that, then so be it. I don’t feel she did poorly with what she was tasked with. However, I felt the story needed a bit more from her. The mere physical specimen of her felt like a carrot on the end of a stick, given the feeling that the script had less and less to do with her as time went along (not counting the forced and oddly shot scene of her argument with Bobby when they are on the run as she hurls an “I hate you!” at him. This much felt like an afterthought-like introduction of what could be her sudden and clear break from Bobby). Just how committed Bobby and Amada were to each other was established early on in their bedtime talk (they were to move in and she even mentioned children). Something went unnervingly unfinished between them, but was this writing indecision or a ploy for introducing more drama without the girl? I don’t know, maybe I should just take it as it is. That Joaquin Phoenix can bring an unspoken energy to a performance and wrangle it in for crater-sized impact is apparent. He carries that in enough scenes and delivers where it needs summoning, drawing on emotional resevoirs that shine in its extremes requiring tears and anger and shame. But these moments are reserved for the early parts of the film, as if he interpreted the angst of the compacting losses to be stiffness. The ending to the film rubbed with some scintilla of implausibility at times, but was altogether satisfying, if not maybe a bit too cogently so. Wahlberg’s input was a tid bit flatter, (again in the latter parts), emoting a presence in the some of ways we’ve seen him do so (Departed). He faded just a bit toward predictability for my liking though. Jumbo (Danny Hoch), Bobby’s nightclub sidekick and anti-brother, was to be a warm (and ultimately wussified) staple to the film’s contrasting devotions between the real brothers. Night owned a cinematic night, as much of the film was positioned in the concocted and concealing dark of the club, the gloom of night or the somber grays of rainy, stormy days. And when it was day and NOT raining, there seemed to be funerals. And I’ll spare you just when it was when the film saw true, unfettered daylight (if I’m not mistaken). Night is essentially a worthy work, although it doesn’t rival its edgier aforementioned predecessors, nor did it seem like writer/director James Gray intended it to be such through and through, dipping deeply into the nostalgic well of style and appearance. It may not be fair to say some of the offerings of the plot developments could have been from the vault of a TJ Hooker episode with the way some things resolved, but there…I said it. Both Phoenix and Wahlberg were credited as producers in the project and I wonder how much they had to tinker with in a movie that was more familiar than novel.
Comments |
|
| ||||
|
Copyright © 2007 the Movie Maven • Powered by WordPress • Driven by the internet domain registration services of Loud Sign. Google Shadow
| ||||||||
