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Focusing on two men (Pat Healy as soft-spoken Martin and Kene Holliday as his more boisterous partner, Clarence) trying to eke out a living by working for a sleazy record company named Great World of Sound -- which, incidentally, shares the same initials as the outfit's owner, thus making it easier to cash checks simply written to "G.W.S." -- the film follows the pair as they meet with ordinary folks who answer the company's newspaper ads seeking new musical talent. With thoughts of fame and fortune dancing in their heads -- or often just daydreams of escaping from their dead-end jobs -- these aspirants are cajoled into passing along up to $3,000 of their own money as a sign of their commitment to allow this company to record and distribute their songs. Most wisely pass, but a few fork over checks, and it slowly dawns on Martin that he works for a bogus outfit, a revelation that unleashes the stored-up guilt surrounding his role as the needling middle man.
Great World of Sound displays all the trademarks of a true indie effort, especially in its refusal to sentimentalize either the characters or their situations. The finger-wagging isn't directed at the musicians looking for that one big break (the ones on display, many of whom were tricked into believing they were really auditioning for a record company and not for a Borat-type film scam, are more down to earth than those plastic American Idols). Nor is it really directed at the salesmen, who are only doing their best to snag enough crumbs to survive in a cruel world. If anything, it's aimed at the sleazeball heads of G.W.S., career con men who don't think twice about bilking hardworking lower-class people out of what little money they have (they would have made marvelous "yes men" at Enron).
Yet because these unctuous bosses don't have that much screen time, the overriding mood perpetuated by the film isn't one of righteous anger but of resigned disappointment, a sadness that the notion of hard, honest work simply isn't enough in today's marketplace. In that respect, Great World of Sound taps into that most crushing of accepted truths: The bastardization of the American Dream is far easier to achieve than the Dream itself.
(Note: Although Great World of Sound was primarily filmed in Charlotte, most of these scenes are set indoors, thus not allowing for many recognizable landmarks. However, familiar faces from the area pepper the supporting cast, among them Hope Nicholls, Donna Scott and Tim Parati.)
AT LEAST writer-director James Gray sports a surname that helpfully describes his motion pictures.
It isn't that Gray's a poor filmmaker, but his previous two efforts -- the competent but colorless crime dramas Little Odessa (1994) and The Yards (2000) -- were so ordinary that, years down the road, I honestly can't remember a single scene from either one. If nothing else, We Own the Night marks a step in the right direction in that it boasts of one terrific sequence worth recalling: a car-chase-cum-gun-battle unfolding in a rainstorm so blinding and fierce that even the raindrops sound like bullets hitting their designated targets.
Beyond this mesmerizing sequence, We Own the Night, set in 1988 New York City, is another example of (crime) business as usual. Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix) is a nightclub manager at odds with his brother Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) and his father Burt (Robert Duvall), both respected police officers. Circumstances force Bobby to become even more estranged from his family, but that all changes when a powerful drug dealer (Alex Veadov) orders a hit on Joseph. The young cop barely survives, but this spurs Bobby to choose sides in the fight between law and disorder. He falls squarely on the side of right, risking his own life for the sake of his family.
