Review of Broken City (2013) by Phil P — 05 Mar 2013

"You, in my eyes, a hero.".

Before seeing this I thought "This looks interesting, bad reviews, but i'll regard them could be surprising." But the reviews are pretty much spot on. It's nothing new but no films are anymore but this type of film is hard to get right. Intrigue is the key and a well paced story but it doesn't have those two keys aspects.

The plot is that of a political thriller a rare type of film because they're notoriously difficult to get right, to get the watcher interested whilst talking politics isn't easy. And as usual it is the problem here as well. The pacing is all over the place it's occasionally interesting but that's not good enough because the rest is so dull and uninteresting. The story keeps swinging and swinging and gets nowhere, it's an interesting and I think a better director may have made it decent but there is not a great film buried here at best an ok one. it follows the same boring formulaic path that political drams always fall into for one the characters aren't very interesting 'Billy's' girlfriend just isn't real she reacts oddly to things and just leaves him abruptly after one fight, now there may have been more previously but it doesn't hint at it just says "this is happening, deal with it.".

Acting-wise 'Crowe' and 'Wahlberg' are good not great but they make some of it at least interesting you can tell their characters don't like each other. But 'Catherine Zeta-Jones' is terrible, i'm sorry but she's as wooden as a park bench. Due to the character being overall dull no amount of good acting can make the story interesting some of their motives are strange and barely anything is explained as to why this deal the Mayor is hiding is so bad even adding that would have med the film a little bit more interesting. instead it skips all the things that need to be told to get the watcher interested.

There are worse films in the category but nothing as bad as this, this year yet. It moves along with an uneasy pace and meanders trough the boring story and skips over the vital components that could have at least made it watchable. Sure there are moments that make it seem ok but they're certainly aren't often. I can't recommend this to anyone, it's boring, dull and formulaic - steer clear.