WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007)

James Gray’s third time out as writer/director continues his stylistic ode to Francis Coppola & Sidney Lumet, as seen in his sophomore pic, THE YARDS/’00. This time, a leaner story line makes a better fit for a 2-hr pic, but the well worn narrative tracks of Brooklyn cops working to shut down a lethal gang of Russian drug lords misses the odd originality of the earlier film. (This one, however, did make some bucks.) And where James Caan was ‘borrowed’ from THE GODFATHER as THE YARDS’ troubled father-figure, here we switch to that film’s Robert Duvall as unlikely dad to unlikely brothers Mark Wahlburg & Joaquin Phoenix. (They were merely best pals in THE YARDS.) The gimmick this time has Phoenix as a nightclub manager with conflicting filial & financial ties. Gray works so hard at making an honest film and getting the details right, you want to respond positively, but he has little of Coppola’s compositional poetry & even less of Lumet’s on-the-wing spontaneity. Worse, he gloms onto Coppola’s pomposity & Lumet’s careless casting. A dutiful megger, but Gray seems to have learned everything by rote. He needs to start walking on his own.