|
|
EDITOR'S PICK
`Broken
City`: A not-so-perfect tale
Rating:
**
The tale of "Broken City" is nothing new. It gives you broken images
of a complex city - its people and politics through the multi-layered grey
characters of its citizens.
The story is about Mayor Nicholas Hostetler`s (Russell Crowe) re-election bid
and an ex-cop, Billy Taggart`s (Mark Wahlberg) quest for redemption.
In New York City, Billy is a sincere cop who guns down a suspected murderer and
rapist. He is then forced to resign from the force and take a job as a private
investigator.
Seven years later, Billy is barely getting by as a private investigator, the
Mayor contacts him to do a little job. The Mayor suspects his wife, Cathleen
Hostetler (Catherine Zeta-Jones) of having an affair. He is curious to know who
she`s dating, especially since it is time for the polls. Hostetler indignantly
states, "No one would re-elect a Mayor, when they know someone else is
screwing his wife."
After a bit of snooping, Billy concludes that Cathleen`s lover is none other
than Paul Andrews (Kyle Chandler), campaign manager for Jack Valliant (Barry
Pepper), a city councilman hoping to unseat Hostetler in the upcoming mayoral
race. Naturally, this revelation is far too juicy and preposterous to be the
whole story, and Billy turns out to be the mayor`s unwitting pawn in a vast,
painful conspiracy centered around a multibillion-dollar deal to level a public
housing project.
What follows is a messy round of back-stabbings, double-crosses and media
manipulations. Still, even when the script merely skims the surface of the items
of the political agenda, its crisp dialogues often show a measure of rhetorical
force, particularly in a fiery, over-the-top debate between Jack and Nicholas.
Wahlberg, who has also co-produced the film, plays his part within his comfort
zone with practiced determination. Rattling off streams of cynical,
condescending words, Crowe is amusingly loquacious as the megalomaniacal Mayor,
sure of himself. He would have been entirely convincing had the film been set in
another era.
Zeta-Jones, with her hair-do and get-up, seems to emulate Jacqueline Kennedy.
She, along with Wright, Chandler and Pepper are effective enough in roles that
don`t require them to do much more than exemplify a certain type.
Of the ensemble`s lesser-known names, Alona Tal as Billy`s Girl Friday and
Natalie Martinez as Billy`s aspiring-actress wife leave a fairly modest
impression behind.
Director Allen Hughes achieves a reasonable visual facsimile of its intended
setting, ably captured in Ben Seresin`s cinematography and Tom Duffield`s
sometimes pretty, sometimes gritty production design. Other tech elements are
pro.
Unfortunately, it is Brian Tucker`s script that seems to have just missed its
moment. His narrative is fine, but doesn`t have enough sparkle to really stick
out. It offers a rather too slick and dramatically tidy peek inside the
corridors of power, but not evocative enough or unique enough to register as
anything other than a couple of hours of what we know as "time-pass".