Sometimes telling the idea or describing the synopsis of the film is much clearer than the feeling that we had while viewing it. This is exactly my feeling about Broken City, a political thriller taking place in the days between the New York City mayoral elections (with a prologue and some flashbacks added). The story (a corruption case at the level of the candidates involved in the campaign including the incumbent mayor) and the cast should have provided the premises of a – at least – a good thriller. And yet, the outcome, in my opinion, disappoints.
source http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235522/
The name of the lead hero in the film is Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg). He is an ex-cop and the film starts with the episode which cut short his career in the police, a moment when apparently he was easy on the trigger on what seems to be a vigilante killing of a guy everybody hated. Turned into a private investigator he is involved in working for the New York mayor (Russell Crowe) in the final days of the election campaign. He seems to be a honest type, but involvment with politics is not made for honest people, especially as they have a dept to pay to the politician who supported him in his dark hours. All the story however becomes more complicated as the film develops, and the details (mostly related to real estate fraud) are never clear enough or interesting enough. The final is also far from convincing, with a final twist that was hard to believe, belonging to the psychology of self sacrifice.
(video source Movieclips Trailers)
There are certainly reasons to watch this film I admired the quality of the actors – Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones. I wrote actors and not acting, because I do not believe that their roles here are any peak of their acting careers. The principal problem of this film is the story telling, too many threads, none of them too clear, some interrupted suddenly as the relation between the hero and his girlfriend, a character that simply disappears from the story with no much explanation. Broken City ends by being much less that it could have been.