'We Own the Night' opens Oct. 12

BY BOB STRAUSS>FILM WRITER

How do you follow up playing - and quite respectably singing - a cultural icon like Johnny Cash?

If you're Joaquin Phoenix, you dive into two deep-dish character dramas. In "We Own the Night," he's a 1980s New York nightclub operator at odds with the cops in his family, played by Mark Wahlberg and Robert Duvall. "Reservation Road" sees him as a college professor who wrestles with his urge for revenge after his child is killed in an accident.

"They were the only scripts that I didn't throw across the room after page 20," the 32-year-old "Walk the Line" star says with a laugh that doesn't necessarily mean he's joking.

"To me, it's totally obvious that you'd want to work with James Gray (the "Night" writer-director whose previous film, "The Yards," Phoenix also appeared in), Duvall and Wahlberg, or with Terry George (Phoenix was in the "Reservation" director's "Hotel Rwanda," too), Jennifer Connelly and Mark Ruffalo.

"They're amazing opportunities and, as an actor, I obviously like extreme emotions. I think that's what's desirable and wonderful - sorry if I'm being pretentious - about art or anything creative. It takes us to these extreme places. You don't have to live in it all the time, but it's wonderful to go there."

In the case of "Night," it's the murky morality formed when law and loyalties clash that the actor found intriguing.

"I really felt that the film could be interpreted in a number of different ways, depending on the viewer," he says. "I liked that idea. It's rare. Most films tell you exactly what you're supposed to think."

As for "Reservation," well, there is a way of looking at that one as yet another of this season's cinematic comments on larger world conflicts.

"Particularly at this time, politically and socially and with what's going on with the war, the idea that we can feel so justified in hate is worth examining," Phoenix says.

"Even if we feel loss or are taken advantage of or violated, we must know both sides of the story before we make a judgment of death upon someone else."