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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 13 December 2007

Joaquin Phoenix plays night club owner Bobby

Explosive tale of family feud

WE OWN THE NIGHT
Directed by James Gray
Certificate 15

SON against father. Son against son. We’re into family feuding here, with Robert Duval as a grizzled police sergeant torn between his son Joe (Mark Wahlberg) following him into the ranks of New York’s finest and the career of his other boy, Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix).
Bobby has turned his back on the family and is doing rather well for himself running a glitzy night club in Brooklyn which has become a haven for Russian mobsters. Led by drug dealer Vadim (Alex Veadov) following the current trend of movie villains, it has more than its share of patrons who would look happily at home in stocking masks.
The central theme is as old as the hills, all the way back to Cain and Abel. Indeed some of the scenes in this dark and gritty thriller have an almost biblical intensity as Duval – who in my book can do no wrong in front of the cameras – finds the family conflict tearing him apart.
When Joe leads a raid on the club and gets shot for his pains in the shoot-out, the fuse is lit for an explosive climax.

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