Manhattan Night

Manhattan Night is a 2016 American crime thriller film written and directed by Brian DeCubellis. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Colin Harrison. The film stars Adrien Brody, Yvonne Strahovski, Jennifer Beals, Campbell Scott, Linda Lavin and Steven Berkoff. The film was released on May 20, 2016, by Lionsgate Premiere.

Plot
The story is narrated in the first person by Porter Wren, a columnist and crime reporter for a New York City newspaper. He is a popular journalist and his stories are widely read. Wren knows how to listen to people and there are people who just need to talk, especially to him. He attends an after work party hosted by the publishing magnate Hobbs where, for the first time, he meets Caroline Crowley.

Mrs Crowley was recently widowed by the mysterious death of her husband, Simon Crowley. Crowley was a brilliant movie director who would often just disappear at night to videotape stuff. Crowley's body was discovered in the rubble of a demolished building. No one could figure out how the body got there.

Caroline invites Porter to her apartment where she shows him confidential police reports related to the death of her husband. She wants Porter to investigate the death and as an incentive seduces him even though he is married and has children.

Caroline's husband Simon kept footage of many things that he had shot over the years, some with hidden camera.

Hobbs learns that Porter is having an affair with Caroline, and summons him to his office to give his employ a new assignment. Hobbs is soon making threats to Porter's family to convince him to find a memory card Hobbs is sure that Mrs Crowley is using to blackmail him. At the same time Caroline also says she is also looking for the same memory card but she could not find it in a case in which Simon used to keep his cards. She then asks Wren's help to find the card. She said Simon asked her to have sex with a stranger after she lost a game with him. It is the card which has those moments captured. Wren is disappointed to know that Caroline's relationship with him is just to find the card. Soon after, thugs employed by Hobbs have cornered Porter in front of his home, search him for the video and rough him up badly to motivate him to try harder to find the missing video.

Wren goes to meet Simon's father who is at nursing home, but he does not say anything. Wren manages to find a video camera in Simon's father drawer and get a memory card. Upon watching it, it is not the card he is looking for. At the same time, Hobbs' gangsters force their way into Wren's home and shoot his children, leaving them severely injured, which makes his wife apprehensive about her family's safety and criticizes Wren. Meanwhile, Wren also finds out a clue from the memory card that an old lady, who seems to be a very close family member, always visits Simon's father. So he breaks into her house and finds other memory card, but the old lady catches him during the act. Wren somehow manages to explain himself and inquires about the relationship between Simon and the old lady. He learns that the woman is a friend of Simon's family from the neighborhood and acted as a surrogate mother to Simon as his own mom passed away when he was a child. In wanting to repay her and her husband for the kindness, he made arrangements to pay them a monthly fee. Mrs. Segal felt obligated to do something for the money so treated her visits to Simon's father in the nursing home as a care giving service in billing Simon's estate. Additionally, Simon asked her to mail something to a third party on a random basis for which Porter deduces is the missing video that Hobbs and Caroline has been looking for. Porter gets Mrs. Segal to hand it over, and he watches it, seeing that it as intimate encounter between Hobbs and Caroline.

Wren returns the video to Hobbs so that all threats are removed. In the spirit of alls well that ends well, Hobbs gives Wren a key that his goons had found when snooping through Caroline's apartment looking for the video. Porter figures out that it is the key to the lock of the basement where Simon was found dead in the rubble after the building was destroyed. He goes there again and talks to the neighbor and finds a way to get into the basement. There he finds a small camera hidden at the corner. He takes the memory card and watches it. There, he finds Simon took Caroline to the building in an attempt to force her to tell him the secret between her and her stepfather which she revealed to Hobbs in the video. Caroline refuses to tell Simon. Wren watches as he sees Simon's extortion plan go terribly wrong.

After Wren watches the video, he accepts to meet Caroline for breakfast. Wren reveals that Simon kept the recording of the night he died. Caroline tells him the secret between her and her stepfather that she refused to tell Simon. Porter gives her a copy memory card and he keeps the original one so that Caroline cannot disturb his wife and family. He then leaves.

Cast

 * Adrien Brody as Porter Wren
 * Yvonne Strahovski as Caroline Crowley
 * Jennifer Beals as Lisa Wren
 * Campbell Scott as Simon Crowley
 * Linda Lavin as Norma
 * Steven Berkoff as Hobbs
 * Kevin Breznahan as Ron
 * Thomas Bair as Tommy

Production
On January 29, 2014, Adrien Brody and Yvonne Strahovski joined the cast of the film.

Release
The film was released on May 20, 2016, by Lionsgate Premiere.

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Manhattan Night has an approval rating of 33%, based on 21 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".