We Own the Night
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 12, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
14
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
It's awfully difficult at this point in film history to come up with a car chase that's startlingly new, but Gray pulls it off. It's the best of its kind since "The French Connection." Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
At its core, it's an exploration of the demands and obligations of brotherly love, staged with honesty, originality and a surprising spark of intelligence. Read full review
80
Village VoiceNick Pinkerton
The closest thing Gray's done to a commercial actioner, the film also applies his genius for tone (aided by superlative sound work) to set pieces that throb with trauma: a tinnitus-soundtracked shoot-out and a rain-slick car chase set to the tempo of windshield wipers. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
We Own the Night is defiantly, refreshingly unhip. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
With a cast like this, one has a right to expect something amazing, so the fact that We Own the Night is merely "entertaining" might cause disappointment in some quarters. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is an atmospheric, intense film, well acted, and when it's working it has a real urgency. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The movie really belongs to Phoenix, who gives a haunting performance with just the right degree of intensity. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The movie's climactic car chase is as absurdly thrilling as it is innovative. Set almost silently in a blue-gray daytime downpour, it has a tough, improvisatory danger that makes the movie. If John Coltrane went in for action sequences, he'd have dug this one. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Whatever the case, We Own The Night plays like a masterpiece because it skillfully appropriates actual masterpieces, not because it earns the label on its own merits. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Gray knows how to sell the idea of unalterable destiny with a car chase: That’s the mark of a real action director. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Adequately acted and flecked with the required quota of action to satisfy genre fans, pic recalls numerous good police dramas of the 1970s, but mostly in superficial ways that bring nothing new to the table. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
An intriguing blend of mainstream audience-pleaser and a more subtle, even intellectual agenda. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Phoenix is an arresting presence on screen, but don't expect any "Departed"-esque fast talk from Wahlberg, who is oddly inert in a role that should crackle with brotherly ambivalence. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The story is too patterned and too contrived. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
At times solid and suspenseful, at times dopily implausible and woefully familiar. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Creaky in its plotting, occasionally electrifying in its direction, We Own the Night is even more of a throwback to old-fashioned crime dramas than Martin Scorsese's "The Departed." Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Phoenix gives a nice performance as a man caught between loyalties but blind to the realities all around him, but Gray's screenplay is filled with clunky, Dr. Phil-sounding aphorisms that stop the movie cold. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
When it goes wrong, specifically when Bobby is given a badge like an angry Earp brother in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," the story turns into something barely at the level of a TV cop show. Read full review
63
PremiereGlenn Kenny
We Own the Night can't sustain itself; as the stakes of the story get higher, Gray paints it in broader and broader strokes until there's almost nothing you can believe in it anymore. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
A more accomplished film than "Yards." Yet it will fail to satisfy police movie buffs, as procedures are de-emphasized, and the drama is too perfunctory and obvious. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
It's a bare-knuckled crime drama set in 1988 that stylistically could have been made that year and emphasizes Gray's strengths as a director while drawing attention to his limitations as a writer. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
This is a perfectly serviceable thriller. It's just not the New York family crime saga it clearly wants to be. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Gray’s writing lacks the punch and zing that might take your mind off such rickety plotting. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The story takes place in 1988 in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Coney Island, but I could never figure out why; with its pitiless gangsters and virtuous boys in blue, it could have been set anywhere. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The problem with We Own the Night is that it mistakes sentiment for profundity, and takes its ideas about character and fate more seriously than it takes its characters and their particular fates. “I feel light as a feather,” Bobby says in a crucial scene, at which point the movie starts to sink like a stone. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
Too slow to be a guilty pleasure and too dumb to be an innocent one. Read full review
50
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Yet the whole thing is so generic, so been-there-before, that I spent most of it asking myself nitpicking questions. To wit: Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Ultimately done in not just by its familiarity -- anyone who can't figure out where the story is heading hasn't watched enough Scorsese -- but also by the convenient coincidences and contrivances Gray relies on in order to pump the story into something greater than it needs to be. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Things are a little off. The style is gritty 1970s-style crime thriller, but the morals are straight out of 2007, and the movie is set in 1988. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Gray would have been happiest, I guess, to make movies in the nineteen-seventies, and this one feels much closer to 1975 than to 1988; he could certainly use a seventies audience to watch his movies now--one that could be trusted not to grumble about his slow, unexcitable fades. Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The plotting is so rickety that the action hinges on suspicions roused by a character carrying a cigarette lighter and matches. Is that more rare or suspect than a man wearing a belt and suspenders? Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Gray's signature long takes and overhead shots are in evidence and add to the film's fatalistic tone, and one rainy car-chase sequence is a real keeper. But, overall, it's impossible to shake the film's gloomy sense of eternal repetition. Read full review
40
Film ThreatDon R. Lewis
Falls into the category of the contrived and forgettable cop drama. Read full review
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