When I first saw James Gray's gritty New York cop thriller "We Own the Night" at Cannes earlier this year, I was dimly aware it was a movie that didn't surrender all its secrets on first viewing. Set in the coke-and-murder Gotham of the late '80s, as the Russian mob is beginning to supplant the city's traditional mafia organizations, this tremendously crafted crime drama with an A-minus Hollywood cast -- Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes -- struck many viewers as a strange choice for the world's most prestigious film festival. There was even scattered booing at the first press screening, and while that's a known and unpredictable hazard of Cannes, it can nonetheless have a long-term ripple effect on a movie's reputation.
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