In a year like 2007, a high-water mark year for cinema, it’s easy to get overshadowed by titanic achievements like No Country For Old Men, Zodiac, and There Will Be Blood. It was a period filled with auteur-driven masterpieces about weighty subjects that reflected on the eerie future. Buried by these modern classics are riveting genre films and equally potent, prestigious dramas that didn’t get their fair share of acclaim upon release. One of the most curious films of the year, We Own the Night, sees James Gray converging a family drama with a gritty New York City crime thriller. In this poignant film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, a pair of brothers are culturally divided, but the bleak fate of their respective paths unites them.

Joaquin Phoenix & Mark Wahlberg Have Different Priorities in ‘We Own the Night’

James Gray, who rarely receives acclaim from awards bodies and mainstream audiences, is one of the most gifted filmmakers working today. A director whose repertoire ranges from intimate dramas like Two Lovers and Armageddon Time to cerebral genre exercises like The Lost City of Z and Ad Astra, Gray’s impressive versatility is matched by his knack for understated character studies. On the surface, his films are quite commercial with popular appeal, but they reveal themselves to be subversive examinations of family, crime, and the fleeting sense of the American Dream.

With We Own the Night, Gray returned with two previous collaborators in Phoenix and Wahlberg to tell the story of two brothers, Bobby Green (Phoenix) and Joe Grusinsky (Wahlberg). Bobby runs a nightclub with connections to the drug trade and the Russian mob. Joe is a captain for the NYPD, working under their father and police deputy chief, Burt (Robert Duvall), running an anti-drug unit. Bobby is estranged from his family, as he adopted his mother’s original surname. Joining Bobby in his life of excess and pleasure is his girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes). Their paths cross when Joe leads an investigation into the club’s drug trade, which leads to Burt’s demise, causing Bobby to take matters into his own hands.

Beyond the casting of Robert Duvall, We Own the Night is a Godfather-esque tale of a respected authority figure with two sons taking bifurcated paths in their lives, with Bobby rejecting the family business in the police force and Joe following in his legendary father’s footsteps. The casting of Phoenix as an alienated outsider and Wahlberg as a respected stalwart within his institution is genius on Gray’s part, who both worked with the director in his second feature, The Yards. Already disconnected from his prideful police family, Bobby gets into hot water with his brother for his involvement in the narcotics trade, even being arrested one night for drug possession. After his father is killed, Bobby enlists in New York’s finest to avenge him, which ends his relationship with Amada.

James Gray Paints a Cerebral and Gritty Portrait of Crime and Family

The narrative structure of We Own the Night is nothing wholly original, but it is Gray’s tone and emotional focus on the family divide that makes the film a hidden gem. Gray’s exploration of middle-class New York is at its most gripping in this gritty but heartfelt crime thriller evoking the work of Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet. Even if Bobby’s motivations behind disavowing his family are left ambiguous, his sentiment is relatable. Based on Joe and Bert’s symbiotic bond, we suspect that Bobby was raised strictly to become a cop, and the familial pressure became so overwhelming that he was forced with no choice but to rebel. While he is sleazy, Bobby’s independence is admirable, especially from a 2024 lens where much of society is skeptical of the institutional apparatus of the police. When he, late in life, finally decides to join the forces to avenge his father’s death, a moment that should be met with catharsis is filled with poignancy. Bobby is steering away from his righteous, independent path. He may have now indoctrinated himself into his cop family, but it only means that he is part of the system.

We Own the Night, overlooked upon release in 2007, is a defining work by James Gray for its excellence as an operatic melodrama and white-knuckle police procedural. The director seamlessly deploys the storytelling template of Bobby’s conflicting loyalties to his social environment in the drug trade and family in the police force to make a cerebral crime thriller. As a cop thriller, the film also delivers, as the action set pieces, particularly a car chase that would make William Friedkin proud, are both visceral and moody. In We Own the Night, Gray shows the overpowering institutional influence of the police force within a single family. For Bobby, the only route to becoming indoctrinated into the family was by putting on the badge.

We Own the Night is available to watch on Paramount+ in the U.S.

Watch on Paramount+