Even if you don’t enjoy his films (and few do), you have to admire the tenacity of director James Gray. In 13 years, he’s put out just three films – none of them groundbreaking, and hell, none of them half-way decent, but that doesn’t stop Gray (who is the supposed inspiration for the insane director on “Entourage”, Billy Walsh) from trying.

“We Own the Night” follows the three male members of the Grusinsky family. Father and son Burt (Duvall) and Joseph (Wahlberg) are cops, while the youngest sibling Bobby (Phoenix) has broken free, managing to run a nightclub with the mafia. Cue police tension, drug running and undercover twists.

Like his previous effort, “The Yards” (also starring Phoenix and Wahlberg), the film has a decent cast and starts strong, opening with a heated sex scene (Mendes’ tits being enough reason to drop $70), but it slowly falls into the clichéd tedium of crime flick trappings: good guys do good, bad guys do bad, undeveloped characters are stuck in the middle, people change sides, people change back, there are shootouts and car chases and it’s all taken way too seriously.

It’s obvious that Gray is a decent director with an encyclopedic knowledge of film – but as any freshman film student movie will prove, knowledge isn’t always enough. The film suffers from one crippling problem: unbelievability. Just throwing this out there based on my short synopsis, but why in pluperfect hell would the mafia hire a cop-family kid to manage their drug-running nightclub? It’s hard to imagine, but it’s not so hard to imagine that in 13 years, Gray’s made just three films. Jessica Lai - 2 stars

Directed by James Gray. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes. 117 Minutes.