On the back of the We Own the Night DVD, there is a quote by notorious quote whore Shawn Edwards that proclaims the movie is, "More intense and entertaining than The Departed." As both a fan of Martin Scorsese and a concerned citizen, I find this quote to be highly insulting to an excellent crime movie, and also believe that some kind of anti-drug campaign should be built around it. Mr. Edwards is clearly on something if he truly thinks We Own the Night, which I hesitate to even refer to as a film, is anything more than a movie of the week. If anything, We Own the Night is to The Departed as A Bronx Tale is to Goodfellas, a deathly pale imitation of a masterpiece of its genre.

From the opening montage of vintage photos of New York cops on duty, its painfully clear writer/director James Gray desperately wants us to take We Own the Night seriously. The only problem is, his movie is a joke. Despite its decent opening that introduces us to the '80s-tastic, drug-fueled world of night-club owner Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) in at least a semi-decent manner, We Own the Night quickly devolves into a series of poorly executed, highly familiar genre clichés. Bobby works for a Russian mob boss whose wife makes all kinds of tasty ethnic food, his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) is hot and absolutely coked-out, and Bobby himself is something of a dark horse in his family of cops (Robert Duvall and Mark Wahlberg). Pretty original, huh?

In all honesty, I don't have much of a problem with genre conventions on the condition that they are well done. This is where We Own the Night fails. The movie becomes especially terrible as soon as the cops ask Bobby to help them take down the drug dealers he works with, which is very early on. Gray seems to think his script is strong enough to handle the plethora of "shocking" twists, but all that emerges is a murky mess of inconsequential and flat action sequences that do little to engage, or even excite the audience. The characters are never shown or played to be anything more than caricatures, so there are absolutely no stakes at all. The action isn't even interesting at that, so there is no fun to be had. Gray seems to be striving to emulate the action scenes of L.A. Confidential (which primarily worked because we were actually invested in those involved), but he isn't even capable of at least entertaining for less than two hours.

To spare you the grief, I won't even elaborate on how idiotic Bobby's transformation from coke-head nightclub owner to super-cop is.

On the special features front, We Own the Night is a wasteland. James Gray's commentary is bland and lifeless, and the featurettes do nothing but highlight the movie's flaws. In all honesty, the best thing on the entire DVD is a preview for Taxi Driver. Rent that instead of this.

There is absolutely now way in Hell I could ever recommend We Own the Night. It is a waste of time for anyone who watches, as well as the film it was shot on. There are no redeeming qualities to be found, and even the most forgiving fans of stylized crime movies (like me) will hate it. In other words, this really sucks.