Movie reviews, production notes, and more! - "We Own the Night"

Movie Review: We Own the Night

Film Review By Michael Phillips, Tribune movie critic For every 50 numbing examples of digital effects in the movies, you happen upon a computer-generated wonder. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it isn't. The best scene in the otherwise lugubrious new crime thriller "We Own the Night" is a car chase in the vicinity of New York's JFK airport. Amid a torrential rainstorm on a busy stretch of highway, Russian mobsters pursue police vehicles whisking the characters played by Joaquin Phoenix and Eva Mendes to an undisclosed location. Guns blazing, the mob goons bash their vehicle into the unmarked police car. Behind the wheel Phoenix narrowly misses a jackknifing semi trailer skidding out of control. The basic ingredients in this scene are nothing new, really, except for one digital wrinkle: The rain is fake. It was added later. It looks fantastically realistic in a subtle way. And it explains why you're seeing stunt driving on slick, dangerous streets that would not be possible if the precipitation were legit. Twice, writer-director James Gray rouses his story, and the audience, out of an atmospheric fog. It happens on the digitally moistened freeway, and in an earlier sequence depicting a drug bust near the Coney Island section ... read more Official Web Site: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/weownthenight/ Back to main movie page Showing Today at: Click here for other showings