I don’t know why I put off watching this one so long. I might have lost a little of my enthusiasm for James Gray after watching The Yards and Little Odessa, neither of which did much for me, but this was fantastic. Phoenix’s performance is probably one of the best I’ve seen in years. I don’t actually think his announced retirement from acting is for real, but, on the off-chance it is, this is a heck of a film for him to end his career on. This character could so obviously have been done horribly – a lot of actors would read a script about a mentally imbalanced young man who lives in Brighton Beach with his parents and gone for some horrible Woody Allen-inspired caricature, but there is none of that at all here. I was less impressed with Paltrow’s performance, mostly because I’m just not a big fan of hers in the first place, so I initially had a hard time really buying her as an irresistible object of desire, but Phoenix managed to sell me on that as well (particularly in that second rooftop scene).

Just as good as Phoenix’s performance is Gray’s decision to effectively remake We Own the Night as a romantic drama. I mean, obviously, it’s not the same note for note, but the main character’s arc is very similar. It’s particularly interesting given Gray’s interest in films that attempt to work against their narrative (which he gets into a bit in this interview from a few years back). It does seem to be pretty much impossible not only to make an anti-war movie, but an anti-violence revenge movie (judging by the misreadings of Taxi Driver, The Godfather, and We Own the Night). Here, though, it’s almost impossible to imagine an audience cheering for this ending. It’s completely heartbreaking, even if it’s visible and inevitable for the last half hour or so, in almost exactly the same way We Own the Night was, but there is no conflict in the audience at all. I mean, I get what he’s going for in We Own the Night, and that ending is completely heartbreaking, but there is still so much genre convention pushing the audience toward the pleasure of seeing revenge meted out, that at least part of us doesn’t care how much Bobby is destroying his life in its pursuit. Here, freed from the genre constrictions of that film, the conflict disappears, which is really kind of fascinating. It almost feels like Gray made this film just to prove a point.