While James Gray’s murky cop drama perhaps didn’t belong in competition at the Cannes Film Festival – it’s a solid, if unremarkable piece of storytelling – it certainly didn’t deserve the chorus of boos and catcalls which drowned out the closing credits at its first press screening.

Gray revisits the same blue-collar Brooklyn milieu that was the setting for his previous films, Little Odessa and The Yards, and he reunites with The Yards stars, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg. The themes explored are similar too – second and third - generation immigrant family politics clouded by conflict between familial duty and the need to make a buck on the mean streets of New York. The lack of new thematic ideas is not in itself a problem – it’s a dramatic seam rich with potential. But the lack of directorial flair is something of a disappointment. At times the narrative is so plodding, it might as well be wearing concrete boots.

What lifts the film and lights it like a beacon is Phoenix’s superb central performance. In his first role since his extraordinary turn as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, Phoenix negotiates a character arc that would leave lesser actors foundering. We meet him as Bobby Green, a nightclub manager with big dreams and a smile that dazzles like a mouthful of diamonds. If Bobby is the king of his little world, his queen is Amada (Eva Mendes), a Puerto Rican beauty who charms the nightclub VIPs by draping herself around them like a mink coat. But Bobby has a secret: his father (Robert Duvall) and brother (Wahlberg) are cops. And as his father grimly points out, they are about to find themselves on opposite sides of a drugs war.

It’s a war that has casualties. And when the Russian mob strike at the heart of his family, Bobby is forced to act to defend them, sacrificing his glittering lifestyle for a series of grubby motel rooms and an airless, joyless existence in witness protection. Amada wilts, an exotic flower plucked from her hothouse. But Bobby has earned the one thing he never admitted he needed – the respect of his father.

It’s quite a sentimental film, in a manly, square-jawed kind of way. Bobby may have lost everything he cared about by the end of the film, but at least he can stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother without feeling like the kid about to be sent to the headmaster. But while Gray works hard to create the emotional register, he’s careless about other details. There are several plot holes and a couple of glaring implausibilities. And although the film is set in 1988, the soundtrack dates from roughly eight years earlier. A minor detail perhaps, but something many of the audience members picked up on. Gray clearly looks up to the likes of Scorsese and Friedkin, but he lacks their meticulous approach.

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