Broken City Review

23rd Feb 2013

Try as I might, I just can’t take Mark Walberg seriously, but despite his goofy face, this is still an entertaining crime non-thriller. Wahlberg plays Billy Taggert, an ex-cop who narrowly avoids a prison sentence for shooting a young man straight through the head. Russell Crowe ambles in as the oafish Mayor Hostetler, who hires Billy to follow his seemingly errant wife, played by Catherine Zeta Jones. But Billy isn’t seeing the whole picture, and pretty soon the situation gets out of control as the two men try and outwit eachother.

That however, is only a third of the plot and there’s a lot of other storylines weaving in and out of this, changing the tone from drama to comedy to the ridiculous. It’s a pretty easy-going with some silly twists and funny gags, mainly on Taggert being too dim to understand what’s going on and the film presuming an air of mystery that doesn’t exist. It’s not a film that takes itself seriously, but Mark Wahlberg is well cast as someone out of his depth being pushed around by a big perma-tanned bully like Hostetler.

Catherine Zeta Jones, is the biggest surprise of the film; she is very, very good and adds a much needed level of plausibility to the film. In a scene with her and Crowe, she goes from sassy to frightened in an instant with a real subtlety – it make you wonder where she’s been all this time and why she isn’t in more challenging dramatic roles. She certainly elevates the film to more than just Taggart and Hostetler’s boring male-posturing.

There’s a throw away line at the beginning of the film, where Taggert asks a client if he’s the type of person who doesn’t like paying his debts, because that’s the worst type of man there is. The ending comes full circle to this point, that Taggert and Hostetler both have debts they owe and have to pay.

It’s difficult to judge this film, but I was entertained, even though the story is pretty unremarkable. A great film to watch when you don’t want to be too challenged, don’t want to think too hard, one to sit back and enjoy. And laugh at Mark Wahlberg’s face.