Given the cast, Broken City offers promise in an otherwise gloomy crop of January films. Russell Crowe is steady and convincing as the forceful, at-times corrupt New York City mayor Nick Hostetler, whose third term-election hinges on whether or not his citizens believe that he purchased Bolton Village to offer continuous low-income housing to its residents as opposed to flipping it for a few billion dollars to a development company before the end of his seemingly despotic reign.
Mark Wahlberg does a decent job as Billy Taggart, a current private investigator and former alcoholic / detective who was dismissed from the force seven years prior when he was charged with unlawfully killing a young man who had escaped a rape and murder conviction on a technicality. However, in pre-trial, the judge dismissed the case against Taggart, citing a lack of evidence. Taggart walks, earns the mayor’s congratulations and is quietly dismissed because “uncomfortable evidence” had come to light that would certainly bring Taggart back to trial and send him to jail.
From the outset, Hostetler and Taggart are destined to dance in and out of each other’s lives and plans for the rest of the film.
And dance they do. Eight days from the election Hostetler enlists Taggart to tail his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta Jones), whom he believes is having an affair. The following ensues with some clever maneuvers and the help of Billy’s assistant Katy (Alona Tal). Lines get crossed; photos get taken; the plot thickens.
And then it thickens some more. And some more.
And then there’s improbable closure that begs the audience to wonder two things: how will the ultimate arrest actually hold up in court considering the audience is the only one aware of the evidence against the suspect? And, what was the point of having Billy’s girlfriend, Natalie Barrow, (Natalie Martinez) in the movie?
To avoid blatantly spoiling the film, I’ll tackle the second question.
Natalie is an unlikely link between Billy and the young man he kills in the beginning of the film. She’s also an actress who gets her big break in an independent film that discusses the probability that most things are not all “black and white” and “not what they seem.” – just in case the audience watching Broken City isn’t catching on to most of the characters are deceptive and untrustworthy..
She also exists to impel Billy’s seven years of sobriety as well as his quick fall off the wagon into a complete stupor that miraculously dissipates once his cell phone rings. But then she disappears and we never hear from her again. And Billy doesn’t seem to either, but her role as metaphor was spent – as was her purpose in the film.
This is a microcosm of the problem with Broken City. All in all, it’s not terrible, but it’s unbelievable. The twists and turns are easy to stomach, but their ultimate resolutions are not. In effect, this film feels more like a made-for-tv-movie than a major release.
Characters with catchy names – Dick Murdock, Todd Lancaster, Jack Valliant, Paul Andrews – flit in and out for the purpose of shifting focus elsewhere so that the writer can ultimately get to his sorta-profound and mostly-ideological points.
Numerous topics that include poverty, corruption, politics, and equality are at play in Broken City, but they’re all superficially touched, as if the filmmakers fear overcommitting to criticism, but knowledge that these could very easily be expanded into veritable, deep themes. Unfortunately, none of them go very far; instead, they remain on the periphery, leading the audience to witness an act of predictable dogoodery.
And this is why we expect a serialized television drama mostly likely found on CBS, wherein the actions of Taggart impel the rest of the city to break down on corruption a la Serpico or One Good Cop.
On a final note, the “city” itself is distracting. Issues of the 1980’s and fixes instituted in the ‘90’s are set in the current decade. (There is no mistaking the year: car registrations are set to expire in 2012.) It feels as if writer Brian Tucker conjured New York City from films he had seen and things he had heard. If the film were set in the 1990’s, the epidemic corruption would have been much more believable.
