Broken City
(USA, 109 min.)
Dir. Allen Hughes, Writ. Brian Tucker
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine
Zeta-Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler.
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| Mark Wahlberg stars in Broken City Courtesy of eOne Films / Photo: Barry Wetcher |
2013 is off to a terrible start. I’ve taken in only a couple
of new releases in these first three weeks of the year, but the only film worth
seeing features a 66-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping lead alongside a
grandmother. This year’s latest offender, Broken
City, joins Gangster Squad in
defining the perils of “January releases”. Distributors dump such expensive
duds amongst the crowded award-season box office in hopes that the names of
bankable stars might fool people into thinking they’re seeing an Academy
contender. Unlike Arnold’s The Last Stand,
however, however, Broken City can’t
even pass as an amusing diversion. This
film is a yawner. The only award to which Broken
City can aspire is a little golden raspberry, but the berry field might be
crowded if these past three weeks of winter are any prognosis for the year
ahead.
Director Allen Hughes proves himself only one half of a
two-slice toaster with his hokey, if not ham-fisted, direction of Broken City. One half of the directorial
team of The Hughes Brothers (From Hell,
Menace II Society), Allen’s first
solo effort suggests that much of the accolades for the previous films should
be attributed to Albert. Judging from Broken
City, however, Allen can probably take a majority share of the credit for 2010’s
The Book of Eli.
Working with Tucker’s predictable, cliché-ridden script and
Hughes’s wooden direction, nobody involved in Broken City seems to be trying. Mark Wahlberg is painfully
monotonous as the film’s supposed antihero, Billy Taggart, a fallen cop turned
private investigator that is hired by New York’s sleazy mayor (Russell Crowe)
to snap some pictures of his adulterous wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). All Wahlberg
does is squint whilst offering a fatally dull lead performance that drives the
film into bargain bin territory. Crowe gives perhaps the weakest turn of his
career as the meek, awkward and uncharismatic mayor, who is supposed to be a
menacing, diabolically evil monster according to all other players in Broken City. (And I say this as someone who defended his singing in Les Mis.) Zeta-Jones, on the other hand, is
actually not bad – she’s arguably the one good thing about Broken City, but, unfortunately, her character is limited by the one-dimensional
clichés of Tucker’s script.
The flat lead performances do little improve the slipshod material,
since virtually all the story development arises through cryptic conversations,
which are then followed by a handful of blunt one-liners that spell things out
for the audience. (The muffled sound also makes it a strain to follow all the
whispering in the dark.) The story itself is implausibly convoluted, since
Taggart displays no decent investigatory skills and is easily duped in one
silly twist after another. Characters also disappear with little reason, but
the plot holes and narrative gaps don’t add a sense of mystery that a good noir
needs. They simply suck the life out of the movie.
Broken City also
plays upon a series of tired binary comparisons (good/bad, light/dark, and law/justice)
and recycles outdated caricatures of gender and sexuality. It’s the kind of
film that conflates left-wing politics with femininity and homosexuality, and
casts all three in a negative light. Likewise, the film confuses bad flat
lighting with a film noir aesthetic, and casts its characters in a bunch of
awkward set pieces. (The film offers the most passive, pathetic political
debate this side of Stephen Harper.) Broken
City might have made an intriguing thriller if given a massive rewrite, a
new director, and a stylistic overhaul, but it’s simply beyond repair.
A wooden, plodding bore, Broken
City is a stiff little film that’s all too appropriate for the frigid days
of January. One might best face exposure to the cold rather than sit through
this one. It’s just a terrible movie.
Rating: ★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Broken City is
currently playing in wide release.
