We Own the Night

We Own the Night is a 2007 American action thriller film directed and written by James Gray, co-produced by and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, and co-starring Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall. It is the third film directed by Gray, and the second to feature Phoenix and Wahlberg together, the first being 2000's The Yards. The title comes from the motto of the NYPD's Street Crimes Unit, which disbanded in 2002. The film premiered on May 25, 2007 at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, and was released in the United States on October 12, 2007, ultimately receiving mixed reviews from critics and grossing $55 million. Plot In Brooklyn, New York in November 1988, Robert "Bobby" Grusinsky is the manager of the El Caribe nightclub in Brighton Beach, owned by his boss, fur importer Marat Buzhayev, whose nephew, mobster Vadim Nezhinski, is a patron of the joint. Estranged from his father Albert ("Burt"), an NYPD Deputy Chief, and brother Joseph, a newly-minted Captain, he uses his late mother Carol's maiden name, Green, as his alias and hangs out with his mate Amada Juarez and best friend Louis "Jumbo" Falsetti, aiming to soon own a club in Manhattan. Joseph, recently appointed to be in charge of a newly-formed anti-drug unit, warns Bobby he will lead a bust on the spot, hoping to net Vadim. Bobby is locked up for possessing drugs and resisting arrest in the raid on November 22, 1988, souring his relations with Burt and Joseph, who bail him out the next morning; the brothers then come to blows in a harsh feud. That evening, a masked Vadim, whom the police fail to convict, shoots Joseph in the face outside of his house and firebombs his car, hospitalizing him at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center for 4 months. Unaware of Bobby's ties, he picks Burt as a target. Bobby infiltrates Vadim's cocaine-smuggling operation with a transceiver hidden in a lighter, but when the device is exposed, the police storm the operation and seize Vadim.