Naomie Watts

(On Cable TV, May 2022) There’s plenty to admire in the idea of a filmmaker using the medium to deliver a semi-autobiographical period piece – it’s common enough in written fiction, but films are expensive enough to produce that it takes clout to be able to swing such a project. So, if writer-director James DeMonaco -fresh off the box-office returns of a few Purge movies- wants to take us back to 1982 Staten Island for a low-stake day-in-the-life coming-of-age family drama, the least we can do is being open-minded about it. Alas, there’s a limit to the amount of indulgence we can give to what This is the Night becomes. There is, certainly, a good sense of time and place to this take on May 28, 1982 – not so coincidentally the opening night of Rocky III, a cultural event which seems to bring the Italian-American borough to a frenzy. It’s against that landmark that the family drama is set, with overlapping stories about the male members of the Dedea family:  The youngest son has teen-movie issues with a crush and public humiliation; the older son has gender-conformity problems; and the father struggles to keep the mob at bay when his restaurant is in financial trouble. (The family also features a mom, played by Naomie Watts, but her only role is to be supportive of her elder son’s coming-out.)  This is not unpromising material, but various decisions made during the execution of This is the Night limit its effectiveness, starting with using such a milquetoast film as Rocky III as a cornerstone. Blending genres from silly implausible teen comedy to attempted sensitive trans-coming-out drama (in 1982 – but this film is hardly unique in imposing modern sensibilities to period pieces) doesn’t work on a tonal level, let alone confronted with the triumphant machismo of the milieu in which the story takes place. The movie’s screenwriting is often more puzzling than effective, with implausible scenes building on top of each other until there’s no mistaking DeMonaco’s overwhelming contrivances. Putting it bluntly, there are plenty of examples to show that while DeMonaco can deliver a commercial horror script, he doesn’t have the subtlety, sensitivity or wit to carry out something that doesn’t rest on a wildly implausible premise and a very indulgent teenage audience. But, hey, Frank Grillo gets to beat up a guy in the course of a single night so, at least, This is the Night isn’t too far away from DeMonaco’s Purge comfort zone. It isn’t a terrible film, but it fails at being good and ends up somewhere in suspicious mediocrity. There’s a much better movie to be made out of many of the bits and pieces brought together here, but it’s not going to come from DeMonaco himself.