So what if Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Pheonix own the night? Do they own the action and the thrills you're looking for on DVD? Only if you're prepared for a drowsy night. Despite a strong cast and an interesting set-up, writer/director James Gray goes nowhere with We Own the Night, a film that's only justification for existence are a pretty hot groping session with Eva Mendes and a cool car chase in the rain. Admittedly, movies have been made with less reason to exist but that doesn't let the boring We Own the Night off the hook. Despite featuring a usually captivating cast, We Own the Night is frustratingly slow and almost stubborn in its refusal to give you characters or action worth caring about. You'll start to think that the title is in reference to how sleepy the movie will make you.

We Own the Night is the story of two brothers, Bobby and Joseph Grusinsky, played by Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, respectively. Burt Grusinsky (Robert Duvall), the gruff pop, is a New York police chief and his favorite son Joseph follows him on to the force. Bobby goes the other way, falling into the criminal element that hangs out at his nightclub, El Caribe in Brooklyn. The Russian mafia has been using El Caribe to run drugs and the place gets raided by none other than Joseph. When a hitman tries to take out his brother, Bobby realizes that he's the best candidate to go undercover in a world he knows a lot about and live up to his family name.

The cast is good but the script for We Own the Night is so derivative and cliched that they're essentially given nothing to do. It's a static and dull film that has been shot in such a sluggish manner that it never builds up steam. With its odd twists and unbelievable characters, Night feels like an early draft of a screenplay before a script doctor came in to do a much needed 'punch-up.'

And the film isn't helped by a DVD that boasts an average video transfer, standard audio track, and a relatively weak collection of special features. The best extra is the mini-documentary "Tension: Creating We Own the Night", which features interviews with all of the major players, including Gray, Mendes, Phoenix, and Wahlberg. Strangely enough, hearing them chat about the movie makes it sound more interesting than the finished product. A commentary by writer/director James Gray should be interesting to fans of the flick, but where are the deleted scenes? Lastly, couldn't the three brief featurettes really be merged into one?

We Own the Night wasn't the worst movie of 2007 but it was one of the most surprising in its failed potential. With a great cast and a writer/director who had shown promise years earlier with Little Odessa and The Yards, we're certain We Own the Night was the type of project that looked great on paper. The film will still appeal to hardcore fans of the cast, or people very forgiving of what is often excused as being an "old-fashioned thriller," but even they are likely to be disappointed by a DVD that doesn't do enough to pull this dark Night into the light.