We Own The Night

Some directors are obsessed with a very narrow definition of masculinity. They are attracted to testosterone driven, Nietzschean figures who reject social convention and ruthlessly follow their own moral code. Their films are fuelled by smoke, spunk and sweat. They portray women as people who lie about worrying about their husbands, occasionally offering sex or food, but never anything more meaningful.

James Gray is firmly placed within this tradition. Working with his regular collaborator Joaquin Phoenix, Gray’s films glorify renegades who swim against the tide, be that musicians (The Immigrant), criminals (The Yards) or explorers (The Lost City of Z). We Own The Night – the director’s 2007 cop-flick released on Netflix this month – is perhaps the most obvious case.

The film opens, naturally, with a gratuitous sex scene. Phoenix plays a New York nightclub manager Bobby, and Gray is very keen to show us that he is sexually active and a bit of a badass. Bobby has a loose relationship with the law, with nefarious characters operating in his club and his own naughty habits to maintain. These facts worry his NYPD-employed family, but Bobby manages to tread the fine line between work and family until the two worlds become incompatible. His brother (Mark Wahlberg) targets the dealers working at his night club and it seems like Bobby’s has to choose sides – “you are with them or us”, his father avows. The choice ends up being made for Bobby when the drug dealers attack his family, meaning the nightclub manager must say goodbye to his old ways and kick some serious ass, NYPD style.

The film’s problems start with the fact that Bobby is so eminently unlikable. He is a short-tempered bully who seems to be driven by pride and prejudice, and not much sense or sensibility. His infantile behaviour endangers those around him, and when the shit really hits the fan, Bobby shrinks. Gray tries to make Bobby more likeable by pitting him against characters that are pure evil, turning the film into black and white morality tale and forcing the audience to root for Bobby. With the finesse and nuance of a Trump tweet, Gray’s villains say lines like “you’re a dead man” in bad Russian accents just in case we thought they were stand-up guys.

The plot is a spiral of toxic masculinity that ends in mindless violence. It all seems to play out in an amoral space where violent actions have even more violent reactions: Joseph is a little too physical with the Russians, so the Russians shoot at him; the Russians threaten Bobby, so he stabs one; the Russians attack his father, so Bobby has the final word with his gun.

The morale of the film seems to simply celebrate ‘great men’, rather than explore the institutions they work in or the principles they follow, making for a one-dimensional viewing experience whereby the audience is asked to simply enjoy the action for its own sake. The best crime films use illegality to explore deeper human traits, but We Own the Night seems to relish crime itself. ‘Look he’s angry, look he’s shot him’ is about as deep as the film gets; never do you get the sense that bigger ideas are lurking in the background.

With more alpha-fodder on the way – including Gray’s space excursion, Ad Astra – it is worth questioning why Hollywood continues to worship this type of man. Of course we all like a hero, but more often than not these men are not heroic. They are little boys who are pushed to extremes and lash out.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Gray intends his films to be a study of the inherent weakness of men and their violent tendencies. But this does not square with the sheer glee he takes in the sex, drugs and violence, since each scene seems like a celebration, not a critical examination. I am not sure why Hollywood continues to find them attractive figures, but I think it appeals to the worst parts of our nature.