Broken City (2013) * *

Directed by:  Allen Hughes

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Griffin Dunne, Kyle Chandler, Barry Pepper

(Spoilers are present in this review)

Broken City has the right setup for a tense crime drama about big city corruption and scandal, but falls short.    The performances are fine, but couldn't the screenplay have been more creative?    After nearly two hours, we get much ado about nothing (or very little).     Broken City is the latest in a string of films I've seen recently in which real estate developers are the villains.    They've taken the place of Communists, Nazis, and Middle Easterners as the go-to villain.    

Broken City stars Mark Wahlberg as Billy Taggart, a police office who as the film opens faces murder charges for shooting a young man while in the line of duty.     Or was he?    The victim was was charged but not convicted of killing a teenage girl.    Billy's girlfriend Natalie is the murdered girl's sister.    She's sitting in the row behind him during the court proceedings, in case anyone bothers to ask.    Thanks to backroom wheeling and dealing with Mayor Nick Hostetler (Crowe) and Police Chief Carl Fairbanks (Wright), Taggart walks without being charged due to lack of evidence.    However, Taggart is forced to resign and works as a private detective specializing in surveilling cheating spouses.    He could work on the TV show Cheaters if he played his cards right.  

Seven years go by and Mayor Hostetler is in a tight re-election campaign against an idealistic councilman named Jack Valliant (Pepper).   Yes, Jack Valliant, a professional wrestler's name if I ever heard one.      Mayor Hostetler calls on Billy to do a surveillance job.    The Mayor believes his wife (Zeta-Jones) is cheating on him and wants proof.    Billy obtains what appears to be incriminating photos of Mrs. Hostetler and Valliant's campaign manager Paul Andrews (Chandler) together, although there are no lurid sex photos.     There is of course more to this than meets the eye.    The Mayor's wife meets with Billy and tells him to walk away, but he digs in deeper to discover the evil plot afoot is.... a land deal (groan) in which the housing project Natalie's parents reside is to be demolished to make way for high-rise buildings.     

There are other subplots which really just take up screen time and provide distractions from the big, bad real estate deal.     Natalie is a budding actress whose film break is practically soft-core porn, which drives Billy from sobriety to getting sloshed in a matter of minutes.     During a drinking binge, Billy is called to a murder scene by his former partner and by the time he arrives he's lucid and sober.     Another subplot is introduced here, but quickly forgotten about.    Billy's return to drinking is also brushed over and once Natalie leaves the scene, she is never heard from again either.

Wahlberg has played so many cops in his movie career that he could be an honorary NYPD policeman..    He hits the right notes as a small-time detective who gets in over his head.    Crowe is the oily charmer of a mayor who naturally is hiding something.    Zeta-Jones doesn't have much to do other than stand there and look pretty.    The rest of the performances work well, but are at the service of an underwhelming plot.    Based on the buildup, I expected a humdinger of a secret that turns out to be....a land deal.     Ugh.