Review of Broken City (2013) by Nesbitt10 — 08 Aug 2013

"Broken City" quickly descends into a quicksand of clichés, and the results are meager and completely insubstantial. This is a story about power and its abuse in the city, and there are a countless amount of films that have covered this storyline already.Though it's runtime clocks in at a compact 109 minutes, it feels much longer than that. It's never outright boring, but it lacks an accumulative impact.

Mark Wahlberg stars a Billy Taggart, a New York cop is forced to resign after a controversial shooting. But no worries, Mayor Nicholas Hostetler (Russell Crowe) has his back. He hires Billy, now a private investigator, to catch Mrs. Mayor (Catherine Zeta-Jones) screwing around. What seems like a simple adultery case opens a rat's nest of political corruption.

The plot quite simply is little confusing. Several subplots wander off into oblivion never to return. It's occasionally hard to tell whether the Hughes brothers are winking at clichés, or merely adhering to the genre handbook. The script written by newcomer Brian Tucker is a bloody mess that has no sense of direction. Throughout the film, we're led to believe there will be some big "shock" a twist or secret that will cause us to gasp in shock. When it comes, it's so muted and unsurprising that it completely diminishes the film's climax.

The characters are poorly developed, but the overall performances are generally fine. In the right role, Mark Wahlberg can be a tremendous asset to any movie. Unfortunately, Billy is not the right role. Wahlberg is stiff and unconvincing and it quickly becomes apparent that the film would have benefitted from someone with a more volcanic temperament in the lead. As his adversary, Russell Crowe brings a little more to the part, but this isn't the New Zealand-born actor's finest hour. Catherine Zeta-Jones, continuing her comeback from obscurity, does a fine job.

Although well-made, altogether the end result is an unremarkable thriller. "Broken City" fails to impress, largely in part because there is nothing here we haven't seen before. That being said, "Broken City" isn't a terrible film, it's just not particularly memorable.