What is broken city about

Flash forward to seven years later. Billy is scraping out a living as a low-level private detective — peeping into windows, taking photos of guys cheating on their wives, that sort of thing.

Not that life is too rough. Waiting at home for him, with candles and warm baths and many kisses, is the beautiful, aspiring actress Natalie Natalie Martinez , who fell in love with Billy when he came through for her family after they suffered a horrific tragedy.

Still, Billy jumps without thinking when he gets a call from Mayor Hostetler Crowe , who summons Billy to his richly paneled office and offers him a tricky job with a big payday. Just like that, Billy is plunged into a world of relationships that aren't what they seem though we usually figure that out well before Billy does , shady political deals and a mayoral campaign so vicious Rahm Emanuel would be shaking in his shoes. Hostetler's more like a beefy, modern-day Nucky Thompson than a slick politician, his eyes in permanent malevolence mode as he stomps through the city like Godzilla in Prada.

Hostetler's wife, Cathleen — played by Catherine Zeta-Jones as if she watched one too many s film noirs in her trailer while getting her hair and makeup done — is up to something shady. Is she having an affair, as the mayor claims, or is it something deeper? Well, she actually pulls Billy aside at one point and basically tells him what's going on, but he still doesn't buy it. Come on, Billy! We also get Jeffrey Wright as the police commissioner, whose intentions are well disguised; Barry Pepper as Hostetler's opponent, whose name is actually Jack Valliant, I kid you not, and Kyle Chandler as Jack's slick campaign manager.

Meanwhile, there's a mostly irrelevant subplot about Billy's girlfriend and the seemingly NC indie film she's doing, and did I mention Billy hasn't had a drink in seven years but he's about to fall off the wagon? Oh, and there's a lot of flirtatious banter between Billy and his gorgeous, wise-cracking assistant, played by Alona Tal.

Now there's a name, Jack Valliant! I looked up Alona Tal because she's such crackerjack fun in "Broken City. So there's that. Back to the madness of "Broken City.

Billy's hot on the trail, but he can't see the forest for the trees. Whichever studio execs placed this on the Black List need to stop sniggering over the dirty words and earn their money by figuring out just what constitutes a good script. Wahlberg is always a pleasure to spend time with but the phoniness of so many of the scenes and the clunkiest car chase ever defeat even his efforts to entertain. So much of this movie is predictable and so many scenes are actors simply going through their paces with inferior material.

The gorgeous, gorgeous Catherine Zeta Jones is totally wasted in this piece of dreck. Somewhere in this movie there may originally have been a good idea about corruption in the city. Unfortunately nobody appears to have had the courage to grab it by the throat, beat it into shape and present it to the public with any wit, style or originality.

Like it says in the header, this is painting by numbers. Details Edit. Release date January 18, United States. United States.

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See the gallery. It goes unremarked that Billy is too inept a private eye to uncover any of this. But back to the mayor's wife and the opposing chief of staff: Though they weren't sleeping together, they were plotting against her husband, who is involved in a crooked land deal involving the sale of community housing for billions of dollars.

The chief of staff was hoping to get this evidence from a younger man he mentored in college James Ransone , who has a bad relationship with his abusive father Griffin Dunne , a real-estate developer who is the mayor's biggest financial supporter and also his secret business partner in the land deal.

The film consists of Billy pinballing off these various characters, asking the wrong questions or, in a few striking instances, none at all , drawing inaccurate conclusions, and getting that Wahlberg-y look of impenetrable befuddlement that was a specialty early in his career Boogie Nights , Three Kings , etc. Finally, he stumbles upon the developer's son, who gives him the evidence he needs to nail the mayor.

Now, given that Billy had been hired by the mayor to finger a political opponent who subsequently wound up murdered, you'd think he would have had enough evidence to cause some trouble already, especially given that the police commissioner wants the mayor out of the picture. But no one really seems to consider this option. Did you have trouble following this? So did I, which is why I drew myself this visual aid apologies for the quality :.

Alas, I couldn't figure out a way to squeeze in the movie's romantic subplot: Billy's girlfriend Natalie Martinez is the sister of the girl who was raped and murdered by the man Billy killed in retribution all those years earlier.

She's also an actress who is starring in an indie film, which makes Billy uncomfortable because he's a tough New Yorker who doesn't like fey, beret-wearing literally! Hollywood types.