Lately, the hit-and-miss aspect of Mark Wahlberg’s project choice has become more prevalent; anytime he makes a brilliant film, it is usually followed by a bitter disappointment. After playing a badass sniper in Shooter, he ran from pollen in The Happening; The Fighter was an Academy Award-winning masterpiece of filmmaking, while Contraband was a festering, incoherent mess…if I enjoyed Ted so much, what exactly did that mean for Broken City? Messy track record aside, characterizing Wahlberg as a gritty cop alongside other A-list talent like Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones built the potential for this newest drama, while the scoring choice for the trailer all-but-guaranteed my ticket purchase…Kanye West’s “Power” should accompany every film involving law enforcement. It was a bit of a red flag to see such a star-studded release fly-in under the radar as a mid-January release, and early critical consensus certainly didn’t help assuage my hesitancy regarding the aforementioned pattern progression. Still, regardless of a few warnings, my shared love of the crime drama and my loyalty to Mark Wahlberg gave me high hopes for Broken City, and I was praying that I would not be let down.
Wow, after
Contraband, Broken City now stands as a definitive “Strike 2” against my blind
optimism related to Mark Wahlberg’s films, because were it not for my loyalty
to the actor himself, I would have walked out of the theater and spared myself
this lazy, boring, and utterly predictable cinematic train-wreck. In all fairness to the cast, the erratic
script and shoddy direction is largely to blame for the current piece of rot
that should have been an enjoyable movie.
Allen Hughes clearly couldn’t decide how he wanted the film characterized,
as the tone of the narrative shifts so often between failed attempts at humor,
our protagonist’s gritty past, and a thoroughly useless romantic subplot, that
the end result is nothing short of a confused, jumbled mess. Broken
City is the type of film that you pray will get better but never does, and
when you add that to the painfully obvious “twist” and unresolved ending, all
of it is insulting. Even if you are a
diehard fan of Wahlberg’s, this broken film isn’t worth your time or money.
