Broken City

I am not sure what’s with my luck in movie theaters lately but just know that if it’s awful then it probably has happened to me in the past month. For example, during the most intense chase scene in Mama, some clown sneaks up on me running at full speed! After he scares the living hell out of me, I realize that dude was just trying to get back to his boyfriend. Ok that’s fine but it’s not like you were A. missing out on THAT great of a movie and B. if you were worried about your boyfriend sneaking out and ditching you when you went to the restroom, you would hope that he would at least have the common decency to do so during a Les Miserables showing so that you were given a fair chance to find a replacement for him immediately. 

Then there was my experience at the end of Broken City.  I never really understood the love for Marky Mark that every single woman on this planet has; I’ve always thought he looked a little too much like the apes he played opposite of in Planet of the Apes but whatever, I’m not going to hate on the guy. He's done well for himself since his Funky Bunch days and he actually has his hands in some decent productions like The Departed and Boardwalk Empire. But apparently the love for Marky doesn’t just end with women. So once the final credits started rolling, this guy who sat two rows in front of me stood up, stretched his arms, pulled up his pants, zipped his zipper, and then buckled his pants!!! It was at this point that I realized that we were the only two people in the theater. What in the world was he doing the entire time? Did he really like the movie that much? What if he thought he was the only one in the theater the entire time, saw me, and then became so embarrassed that he decides that he has to kill me? And what if someone had done what he just did in my seat the showing before? “We just shared a moment bro” Raffi from The League. I just cowered further into my seat hiding from the guy and realizing that I was probably sitting in dried up semen, about to get killed, and the last thing I saw on this planet was a Marky Mark and Russell Crowe production! Is there really a worse way to go?

So I wont spend too much time on the plot because it’s pretty convoluted but ultimately it leads to a pretty predictable ending. The good thing is that you don’t really see the entire movie in the trailer like it seems you do but honestly it’s pretty close. The movie starts out with Marky Mark who plays a NYPD cop, shooting and killing a random thug in the projects. There’s a big uproar in the community because they feel it was unjustified so he goes to court and is found innocent of any wrongdoing. Russell Crowe plays the mayor of New York City and basically relieves Mark of his duties because there is some evidence that could surface that would be damaging to the case and to the city. But he promises to take care of him at some point in his career. Well the movie then takes you 7 years after this incident and Crowe is up for re-election against a local nobody in Barry Pepper and it is actually a tight race between the two. Marky Mark is a struggling private eye who is barely able to make ends meet with his indie actress girlfriend. 

The movie picks up steam when Mark finally hears from Crowe to help him find out who his wife is cheating on him with. Once he finds out who it is, that very same night the cheating man ends up dead. And it’s especially interesting based upon who it is. This is when the tangled web of lies and deceit starts to unravel, but once it does you just realize that it wasn’t really all that interesting to begin with.

The acting in the movie with the exception of Zeta Jones (who still looks good for her age) is actually pretty decent. The main issue I have with this movie is that it tries to be Michael Clayton but Marky Mark is no George Clooney, Zeta Jones is no Tilda Swinton, and Brian Tucker is no Tony Gilroy. So instead of leaving the theater amazed by the dialogue and seeing yet another side of evil when it comes to corruption, you are just left feeling like you saw another Law and Order episode. It’s not an awful film but it’s not a good one either. With one of the Hughes brothers directing you would at least expect to see a lot of blood and graphic violence but you don’t even get that. The only cool thing A Hughes did was film Marky Mark at a level ground as everyone else so you could see how short he really is. So the fact that he was effortlessly beating up dudes twice his size look even more ridiculous than it normally does.

Overall I rate this movie as WEAK and suggest that you stay home and save yourself the semen experience.