The Yards (Gray, 2000)IMDB LinkSeven years after making “The Yards”, director James Gray makes “We Own the Night” with the same two main actors (Mark Wahlberg & Joaquin Phoenix) dealing it seems on almost similar subjects (crime, family, loyalty, etc). I saw “We Own the Night” and based on that movie, I almost completely ignored “The Yard”, as “We Own the Night” is good, but nothing that one should skip a hooker party for.
Yet, “The Yard” is everything “We Own the Night” isn’t. While the latter is everything you have seen before, “The Yard” is everything you think you have seen before, but it is handled differently and feels fresh. The story will sound simple. Leo (Mark Wahlberg) is out of jail, and wants to go back to a normal, crime-free life. His best friend Willie (Joaquin Phoenix) gets him a job at Leo’s uncle’s railway repair company, and the job involves bribing city officials and disrupting their competitor’s work, and OF COURSE, everything goes wrong, and suddenly, characters have to make hard decisions.
Now here is the thing and this will be a big statement for a movie released in 2000 and almost fully forgotten, “The Yards” is almost Godfather-ish. And I know most people will think that if it is that good, then they’d have heard of it more, but I am not sure why we haven’t! The movie is really very good, and how it plays with conventional scenes.
Take this for example. There is a scene where Leo has to kill a cop in a coma, before he wakes up, and testifies. He sneaks in the hospital and goes to kill the cop with a gun. This is a situation where we have seen in a lot of movies, but just because we have seen it many times, does not mean Leo has done it ever before. And so it is played out in a way that feels fresh. The scene takes its time, with Leo looking uncertain, scared, and very nervous.
And that is what happens constantly in the movie. The characters all act like they are faced with these decisions for the first time in their lives, so nothing is easy to do for them.
A slightly weak ending, but Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix do a fantastic job. It is a shame the movie did not do better with audience or critics, because director James Gray takes a much more conventional route with his next movie.
"The Yards" is not a crime movie or a thriller, it (like "The Godfather") is a family drama, with the family just happen to be involved in crime.
4/5
