Certainly, it involves a lot of violence and a fair amount of three-act storytelling with twists and neat endings. Broken City follows the story of Billy Taggart, a New York City detective (Mark Wahlberg) who decides to dabble in private investigations. He is brought into the fold by Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) to investigate a rather sensitive issue. It’s a case on the “cheating wife” Catherine Zeta-Jones where she oversees husbands as clients.
Billy is the other main character, and this time it seems likely that his crimes will take place within the structures of power rather from the periphery. While Hughes is credited as directing Broken City without Albert Hughes, his elder brother, and directing partner, Hughes serves up a binge of Yesteryear: Old-fashioned political suspense-thrillers dressed up in modern garb and spliced into the form of Broken City. It harks back to the time, of the period which gets lost as the decades go by, when – if one is to judge by such production, Charming Billy and William Magee etc., were being made, but were with no real uniqueness about them. Night Falls On Manhattan, City Hall, People I Know and of late, Pride and Glory and We Own The Night. This is a film that is set to get it’s rather boring yet well known last epiphany. However, it is definitely beginning with constantly revisiting the same point that politics in and especially of populous cities, are rife with malfeasance and malice.
Broken City is a mixture of detective drama and political thriller, but the audience may find the film lacking in both aspects. In other words, there is no reason on the part of the scandal which propels the action of the movie as land grab (not really spoiler) which is quite above nowadays accepted levels of movies. So maybe this was a consequence of the reconciled cynicism in modern politics, but nowadays the idea of exposing such collusion of politicians and developers does not look as something worthive of spoiling a political campaign, let alone shocking you in a movie. In short, it is difficult to find anything in the story that is truly fresh or interesting.
The film includes an impressive cast of actors, including Jeffrey Wright as the politically competent police chief, Barry Pepper who plays Crowe’s overly eager politician opposing him (the oh-so-logically named Jack Valiant), Kyle Chandler who is managing the whole campaign of Valiant, and Natalie Martinez who plays Billy’s love interest who is also an actress (although this romantic angle consumes a lot of the screen time, there is nothing exciting about it and in the end it just evaporates).
He is in his element, stuffing the stereotype of a wheeler dealer mayor who is not so much of a bad guy most of the times and who genuinely cares about his city as – well, he cares so much that he broke the maximum number of moral laws a long time ago, even if you try to redeem him. But, rest assured, whenever Crowe is not on screen, the energy of the movie is either non-existent or very low, and it is kind of a bummer since Zeta-Jones is not up in more of the scenes with him because the few that they are in are so full of tension and contempt for each other. Griffith is the real Zeta-Jones, what little she is in the film. Crowe and O’Donoghue snatched them. It seems she is playing a meaner version of her role as the mayor’s wife in the Rock of Ages but in no time between her appearance to Walsh and Crowe, there is nothing much that she can do other than deliver some cold lines to Crowe and Wahlberg. Probably that is the only reason why she agreed to do the movie -because she wanted to be in the same film as Crowe.
This time around, Wahlberg’s back to his tough guy mode, something he pulls off with ease (e.g., Contraband, Max Payne, Shooter). I do not care much for either of these styles and believe Wahlberg is most appealing in a comedy or doing something a bit retarded (Boogie Nights, Ted, The Other Guys). Nevertheless, it should be said that most of the credit for Broken City should go to Wahlberg as a producer rather than as an actor. He got it out the system, because these days it is hard to invest in such mid-range dramas with no obstruction from the system films empires-Making Center for micro low budget horror slasher and exceedingly huge brand franchise-buster.
It is too bad hence that all their time thesesctively ardent and animated and intellectual hoping of ai failed expectations often dead ended and broken city was just too flat of a movie in boldsnapps.
Conclusion
Broken City is something respectable in cop drama/political drama wannabe thriller genre but will not be stirs your senses up from its very closet.
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