We Own The Night

Yep, they own the night. They also now own 18 of my dollars and three hours of my life.

On Saturday, Brett and I took in the movie We Own the Night starring the delicious Mark Wahlberg and brilliantly brooding bad boy, Joaquin Phoenix. It would be hard to turn down a movie starring two of my favorite male leads. Add to that, it was a movie Brett actually wanted to see, and we had the ingredients for a perfect weekend date.

The movie was okay, maybe two out of four stars using my loose rating system.

There is a sprinkling of sex at the beginning which I thought was completely unnecessary to the storyline. Throughout the rest of the movie, Eva Mendes (who play Joaquin’s character’s girlfriend) shows her love affectionately and physically without resorting to any kind of graphic sex, so I’m completely stumped as to why they threw in an explicit interlude between the two at the very beginning.

Not necessary, but Hollywood likes their R rating, I guess.

They could have easily gotten their R just from the violence alone. There was a LOT of violence, gratuitous, and jolting.

There were especially two scenes which resonated with me. The first is when a man - who is under pressure not to testify - is captured by the police. Instead of facing an interrogation where he might crack, he manages – while in police custody – to slit his own throat. The movies pans in and you see the blood pumping from the open wound. The camera lingers there while you actually see his life’s blood leave his body. It was so disturbing; I had to remind myself it wasn’t real.

The second scene involves Joaquin’s character jumping out of a second story window to avoid being shot by the police - some of who don’t know he’s working undercover for them.

The camera angle shows us Joaquin’s view as his body ejects from the window and slams directly on top of a metal gate. His body see-saws over the gate and smashes onto the cement below. You can actually hear his bones break as he falls. We all jolted in our seats when he took his first shuttering breath after the fall. I think most of us had counted him out.

The actual storyline is simple. Joaquin and Mark are brothers. Mark is a cop, along with their father, portrayed by Robert Duvall, who is the Chief of Police. Joaquin is the manager of a popular dance club.

Mark is promoted to the Narcotics division, and asks for his brother’s help in staunching the tide of drug traffic that can be traced back to his club. The movie takes a lot of twists and turns, and the ending, while somewhat happy, is also poignant and true to life.

Now, back to my familiar movie theater rant.

You’ll be glad to know there were no children at all in my theater. No screaming or crying, so that was nice.

However, near the end of the nail-biting-suspense part of the movie, some idiot opened up his cell phone and lit up the entire front row in a blue glow.

It was BEYOND distracting. And hard to ignore.

Especially when he started texting. DURING A MOVIE!!!

I told myself to stop thinking about it and concentrate on the movie. I felt Brett tense next to me, so I knew it was getting on his nerves, too. Eventually, the idiot closed his phone, and the movie went on uninterrupted.

After the movie ended, we started down the stairs. I turned to see “the idiot” and was surprised to see he was a grandpa. I mean, this guy was at LEAST sixty, if he was a day.

What was even more interesting was a huge, barrel-chested man, Brett’s height, and easily twice his weight, reading the Texting Grandpa the riot act.

“What the bleep do you think you’re doing man? You’re bleeping texting during the bleeping movie? You’re bleeping crazy! You bleeping better watch your back man. Next time, I’m calling the bleeping usher!” He yelled at the TG.

I was so impressed; I just stood there and stared. Brett had to tug me away before the guy asked me what I was bleeping staring at.

I wasn’t impressed at the swearing (which I could have done without), obviously, just that this guy had the stones to stand up for our serious moviegoer rights.

I imagine a guy that big doesn’t have to worry about retaliation or give a lecture twice to the same person.

“Do you think that guy would come with me to movies and talk to people who bring their misbehaving kids in?” I asked Brett.

“I don’t really want you going to movies with other guys,” my husband said easily. “But maybe we could invite him as our guest the next time.”

I had to laugh. Brett is as annoyed with movie theater babysitting as I am.

As we headed out to the parking lot, we saw an even more amazing site. The Huge Angry Man and the Texting Grandpa were getting in the same car! From their loud conversation, we gathered they were friends who go to movies relatively often.

We could still hear HAM giving TG the “bleeping” lecture as they drove off together. We laughed all the way home.

I guess it takes a true friend to forgive text messaging in a movie or someone yelling at you about it.

I hope they got home safely. Without any more texting from grandpa.