We Own the Night

An intriguing blend of mainstream audience-pleaser and a more subtle, even intellectual agenda.

It's not surprising, but it's engaging enough that most patrons will likely cut the director some slack for the out-of-period details and convoluted plot contrivances that make the film seem at once sloppy and too neat.

[Gray's] feel for dialogue has rarely failed him, and it doesn't here.

A desperate violence and urgency spills out in the film's flash-point set-pieces - not least a sensational car chase, shot through a windscreen, hammering rain and a blur of fear.

Time will tell, but from where I'm sitting this deceptively routine cop movie runs deep. In fact, it already looks like a classic. Cagney and Tracy would be proud.