We Own the Night

I tried to draw similarities between James Gray's We Own the Night with films before I saw it, but recognized quickly after viewing the flick was harder to categorize than one would expect.

I immediately condemned the film from the preview; with its star-studded cast and apparently formulaic script; cops, drug-dealers, bad son, good son. Although it was from far earth-shattering in its originality or in its themes, Gray's thriller was a real masterpiece. It reminds you what makes an actor, what makes tension, and what abiding by the rules of Hollywood, entertainment, and traditional omniscient narrative can give you; a fucking good time. Not to mention how much fun it must have been to make a film like this with certainly a low budget (except for actor payroll), rough and gritty dialogue, and a time in New York with characters that are best observed from afar.

I think we could've seen a little more development as to what kind of world of darkness the good guys actually faced. We know there was some shady stuff going on with a peak into the drug trafficking underbelly, and men who evoked an extreme level of fear, but outside of one fantastic murder attempt and an incredibly intense car chase, you were routing for them to catch the bad guy but didn't want his head on a spear with his genitals shoved in his mouth, like let's say, oh, the girl's father in Pan's Labrnyth. Overall a must-see.