I mentioned at the end of my first review this year that the movies I watch for the rest of the year can only go up from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” With all the stars that were in “Gangster Squad” and the not so good acting, I was less than excited about going to see “Broken City” with Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
“Broken City” starts with a ragged Billy Taggart pointing a gun down a street and standing over a dead guy. It then jumps to his court hearing for the murder of the guy who you find out was a rapist and a murderer himself. Billy doesn’t get charged with anything but right after the trial the mayor and the chief of police have a meeting with him. The meeting is to ask Billy to leave the police force forever and he agrees.
Seven years later Billy is now a PI, still in NYC. He gets invited back to see the mayor to investigate who his wife is sleeping with. Billy follows her and ends up finding out who he thinks she’s having an affair with. He snaps some photos and takes them back to the mayor but is unsure if everything is the way it seems. After handing over the photos he realizes that something bigger is going on that he will try and find out.
At the end of the movie there were very few parts that I could think, “that didn’t really make sense.” I do and don’t understand why they had his girlfriend in the movie. She should not have been that big of a part in the movie as she was. She was basically there to start Billy’s drinking again, they could have thought of something else. Russell Crowe was pretty good in this. He was very good at saying something but you could tell he was thinking of something else with his eyes. Maybe he should run for mayor, he’d do a great job.
I was surprised to see Barry Pepper in the movie since I never saw him in the trailers. He plays the other guy running against Crowe. Also, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays Crowes wife, did a great job when she was on camera. Jeffrey Wright usually has very good small roles in movies and was a perfect fit as the police commissioner.
Wahlberg did a great job as well as a cop who is trying to make the best of his situation he was put in. Like my friend Tim said afterwards, “it was a great noir movie” and I agree with him. A lot of the new detective movies are all shoot’em up and ask questions later. This movie makes you think and you get all your questions answered at the end. This movie doesn’t come out till Friday but I would suggest seeing it. Go check this out, it’s worth it.
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