The Yards

An underrated gem -- I could file it next to the best crime dramas by Cimino, Scorsese and Coppola --, packed with maybe the finest, most narratively well-crafted cinematography of the 2000s. This is not a story about guilt or brotherhood, but mainly about honor -- Leo was in prison for some time because he refused to snitch his friends and now seems trapped in a tricky family business, corrupted by money schemes and monopoly -- Caan wants to dominate the railway repair business at all cost.

By no means bad, but I'd rather watch the movies this is imitating. We Own the Night is basically a second attempt at this and features better writing, pacing and acting.

Per usual with Gray, this is is "well crafted" and handsomely filmed, but unfortunately here the sheer genericness of the plot can't sustain the weight of it's own plodding ponderousness. Gray has always been humorlessly earnest to a fault, but here the material just can't support the gravitas and it feels less genuinely moving than merely self-important. Gray treats this like he may as well be directing Shakespeare, but who the fuck really wants to see Marky Mark as Hamlet?

Joaquin Phoenix is young as hell hot damn. Also is it just me or do early James Gray films always have pretty awkward uses of music cues

The Yards is either a moderately effective morality tale that happens to be set within a crime thriller plot, or a low-key, kind of dull, crime thriller that has more insight into the human condition than you'd expect from this kind of thing, even though it's not particularly entertaining. It all depends on what you're looking for and why you chose to watch this particular movie. If you want the former, it'll be worth seeing. If you're hoping for the latter, you'll want to look elsewhere.

There is nobody currently in the industry who works it like James Gray does. The only thing keeping this from an even higher place of esteem is the absolute NOTHING of a performance that Mark Wahlberg continues to grace us with.

pek ilginç bir karakter olmadığı için bu tarz filmlerde muhtemelen hikayenin figüranı olarak kalacak kişinin odağa çekilmesi beklemediğim sürükleyicilikte bir *suç filmine* dönüşüyor james gray'in elinde. ama her filminde olduğu gibi ahlaki gözüken sebeplerle pek inandırıcı gelmeyen atlamalar/bağlamalar yapıyor yine senaryoda. diğer yandan wahlberg'i şu kadronun içine, hem de başrol olarak atmak gerçekten büyük cesaret, ama alıklık tutuklukla aynı değil.

#00s(e)#, story, Charlize T!

File under: "Consistently looks great but impossible to give a shit". More intricate details in the drama than Odessa's cold shoulder cinema but the drama is even more overdramatized so as to leave no real impact. Really for each improvement in worldbuilding and tension there's so much hastened and nihilistic drama masturbation that we about break even. Seriously does look great though, frustratingly. End stretch is horrible, Mark Wahlberg can't act.

Gray improves on his debut IMO, but this is nothing more than decent.

not horrible but still pretty bad. mark wahlberg and the rest of the cast do the best they can. i'm not really into the characters at all and the movie's story doesn't go anywhere for the most part.

Star Rating: ★★★★1/2

Great story, fantastic casting and acting. The chemistry between the actors is just remarkable through this entire film. It's a slow burn that never loses intensity for a second. Every shot, every glance, matters.

Cops so hard from 70s naturalism that it casts James Caan and Faye Dunaway as the aunt and uncle, and fuses that style with a touch of melodramatic fatalism. Works well enough if you like that style, but nothing about it really blew my socks off. Wahlberg should virtually never be cast as a serious lead.

Fine cast; reality rules.

Seen it, or something like it, & this isn't riveting enough to be an extra special version of this sort of thing. Just okay.

the things that made Little Odessa good get an ironing out and a production gloss-over. i didn't even mind Marky Mark because his barely there performance only served the character more. James Gray is vastly underrepresented when it comes to naming auteurs that flourished out of the 90s Miramax/Sundance cabal.

Quite good.

This script does some expected things but there are also some slow moments. The ensemble cast does a good job here. Overall I would recommend this film.

A competent crime story and character drama with a good cast, but nothing you haven't seen before (and better).

Reminds me of Sidney Lumet. Though James Gray's subsequent films are better, The Yards fully deserves that compliment. I'm not really crazy about how this ends - a bit over-the-top in a sense, anti-climatic in another sense - but it's a good film with a pretty awesome cast (right down to Tomas Milian). I don't think Wahlberg is a bad actor, and he has charisma, but his expressive range seems a bit limited in The Yards, which is essentially a drama.

Good work here from Gray early in his career. It contains lots of the themes that he has come back to in his career--family, loyalty, and outsiders are all present here in spades. I've read lots of complaints here about Wahlberg's acting, but he underplays in a way that mirrors the film. Sure, others are more flashy, but the film hangs on Wahlberg's character primarily receiving the action--being pushed here and there. The deer-in-headlights performance works, I think.

There is a good film in here, with some stand up performances. Its just that it feels like it takes forever.

Creative and technically subtle genre-film that risks being very boring, and kind of is, tbh.

A would-be On the Waterfront, directed with a despondent scowl, James Gray lets personal observation suffuse his drama of birthrights, hope and leadership, giving it a feel of authenticity.