Even though there were some big names in Broken City such as Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta Jones, one thing was missing - a good script. That was my first thought on this movie.
Mark Wahlberg plays a private detective who is thrown off the force after being accused of murdering Mikey Taverez, who raped and murdered a 16 year old girl who was the sister of Wahlberg’s wife. Even though Wahlberg’s character, Billy Taggart got off because he said it was self-defense, evidence was covered up.
From there, Crowe plays the evil mayor who wants to hire Billy Taggart - who is a private detective now - to follow his wife - Catherine Zeta Jones - to see that she is having an affair. Taggart, does that and and finds out that it’s true - or so he thinks - and the plot of this movie takes off from there.
I was surprised that Wahlberg and Crowe would take on this movie. Their other movies had more action in them and this one was lightweight to say the least. I didn’t feel much tension in the plot since it was hard for me to believe that the evil mayor was so corrupt that he was going to be a millionaire from a construction job. Call me naive since others may not agree with me.
The plot leads to an end that is somewhat surprising but I thought that if anything, the more interesting part of this movie - if there was one - was the story of Billy Taggart’s marriage to Natalie Martinez and how that developed because her 16 year old sister was raped and murdered. Of course, that was never properly developed.
I think it would have been more interesting if the subplot of the movie was Taggart’s relationship with Martinez. If you think about it, if the movie revolved around the relationship and Taggart’s work with the Mayor and how the may was using evidence against Taggart against him towards the end of the movie, then there would have been more at stake for Taggart and it might have been tougher for him to decide to put the mayor away. There would have been more emotion among the characters as a result.
Instead, Martinez has a short role in the movie and is thrown away after a love scene in the movie. Not much of a part. I think that if the person who wrote the script gave her a bigger part like this, the movie would have been much better than the two stars that I’m giving it.
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