BROKEN CITY

BROKEN CITY  

Jeri Jacquin, Movie Maven

Coming to theatres this Friday from director Allen Hughes and 20th Century Fox comes a film that deals with the games in a BROKEN CITY.

This film tells the story of Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-cop turned private detective. His job causes him a lot of physical damage but he gets the job done. The bills, however, are not getting paid as office manager Katy (Alona Tal) repeatedly tells him.

In the city of New York it is election time. Current Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) is confident he will be re-elected but challenger Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper) is hot on his heels. With every move under scrutiny, Mayor Hostetler hires Billy to follow his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) believing she is having an affair.

Billy takes the job, as the pay is exactly what he needed to square his books. Within a matter of days Billy discovers the mayor’s wife is seeing Paul Andrews (Kyle Chandler). Reporting back to the mayor it takes less than 24 hours before everything begins to unravel.

What he discovers is the underhanded dealings that hurts the city of New York. Billy must decide whether bringing down the house of cards is worth his own freedom.

FINAL WORD: Wahlberg gives a solid performance as Taggart. This is a character I’ve seen him play before – the good guy/bad guy with a crutch because he can’t deal with the truth. I don’t mind it but feel if he keeps this up he will miss out on roles that can actually challenge him.

Crowe is also good at being a bad guy and doesn’t seem to mind it one bit. There is no pretense in his character as Mayor in this film. He has a motive and taking down anyone that gets in his way doesn’t even caught him to break a sweat! Simple.

Pepper as challenger Valliant has a muddled role here. Its obvious he wants to be mayor but I’m not sure all his ducks are swimming together. He is strong when needs be but every chance the character gets to pull up his bootstraps, the scene is cut short.

Zeta-Jones’ role as Cathleen is straight and to the point. Hiding behind sunglasses and intrigue her character doesn’t get much screen time. Chandler also has a small role but the scene where he and Pepper go neck to neck on debate issues was fun to watch.

Tal as Katy is funny, brining about some great scenes together with Wahlberg. She is a no nonsense kind of gal and personally I saw that character as being more believable with Taggart than his screen wife.

Wright as Fairbanks also has a role that is kept a little hidden. Is he or isn’t he? Does he or doesn’t he? Will he or won’t he? That kind of thing and he does it well.

Other cast includes: Natalie Martinez as Natalie Barrow, Michael Beach as Tony Jansen, James Ransone as Todd Lancaster, Griffin Dunne as Sam Lancaster, Britney Theriot as Valerie, and Luis Tolentino as Mikey Tavarez and Jeffrey Wright as Carl Fairbanks.

TUBS OF POPCORN: I give BROKEN CITY three tubs of popcorn out of five. It is a who-done-it type cop film that has its moments. The story drags in many places and a few storylines just go nowhere. The example of that would be the storyline with Taggart’s wife as it went from loving to crap in 10 seconds – not believable.

The over shots of the city were pretty amazing and makes the city of New York look even more beautiful from the sky. It is gritty and the story is easy to follow with the twists and turns not twisting and turning very hard.

In the end – proof can be a powerful weapon.