WE OWN THE NIGHT **½

Writer/Director James Gray's latest is a gritty but unrealistic crime drama starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Robert Duvall, Eva Mendes, and Alex Veadov.

Phoenix and Wahlberg are the sons of Police Chief Duvall, who is very proud of Wahlberg who has followed him into the police force. Phoenix doesn't use the same last name as his father and brother and is the manager of a Russian owned night club. Mendes is the girlfriend of Phoenix. Veadov is the nephew of the owner of the nightclub and is trying to take over the drug traffic in New York, using the nightclub as a base and trying to get Phoenix to help him. When Wahlberg is attacked by one of the Russian mob members after a police raid, Phoenix must finally decide which side he will help.

This could have been a much better picture with just a little more plot reality and development. I found it hard to believe the Russians wouldn't know all about Phoenix's family, even if it was the 80's and Google and the internet weren't available. There's also no background on the two brothers so you don't know why they've taken such different directions. And there's also the fact that the brother's characters aren't all that well developed so it was hard to care what happened to them. I suspect many will like this better than I did, especially those with police backgrounds, and those who've lived on the East coast and find the characters more familiar. The biggest problem for me was that this was such a formula film...there's really no doubt what's going to happen eventually after you're into the film just a few minutes. There's lots of profanity, lots of bloody violence and just a smidgen of nudity, so fans of those elements have something to look forward to.