44 Days of Paranoia #21: Broken City (dir by Allen Hughes)

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, let’s take a look at one of the most disappointing films of 2013, Broken City.

It’s a bit hard to describe the plot of Broken City, not because it’s particularly clever but just because there’s so much of it. The film starts with New York police detective Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) murdering a man in cold blood. But don’t worry, the murdered man was a murderer himself who was only out of jail on a technicality. The Mayor of New York, Nicholas Hostetler (Russell Crowe, who sounds like he’s as much of a New Yorker as I am and I ain’t no New Yorker), pulls some strings and get a judge to drop the charges against Billy. The Mayor tells Billy that he’s a hero but Billy is still forced to leave the police.

Jump forward seven years later. Mayor Hostetler is locked in a tight re-election battle. His opponent is a liberal councilman named Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper.) Yes, the man’s last name is Valliant and — surprise! — it turns out that he’s actually a really sincere guy who wants to make New York a great place to live. We know this because we get to sit through an endless debate between him and Hostetler. While Hostetler gives a speech about how he’s against higher taxes, Valliant says that all he’s doing is asking the rich “to pay their fair share.” The debate audience, of course, explodes into applause. Valliant never gets around to saying, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Maybe they’re saving that for the sequel.

Meanwhile, Billy is now a private investigator. His girlfriend is an actress who has just appeared in an independent film. When Billy goes to the premiere, he’s so upset over the sight of his girlfriend being taken from behind on the big screen that he starts drinking and attacking random strangers on the street.

Meanwhile, (in many ways, Broken City is a movie of meanwhiles) Mayor Hostetler has hired Billy to follow his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and discover who she’s having an affair with. Working with his assistant (played by Alona Tal), Billy follows Cathleen and discovers that she’s been spending time with Paul Andrews (Kyle Chandler), who happens to be the manager of the Valliant campaign…

Or is she? As Billy subsequently discovers, the truth is a lot more complicated than it seems (or probably needs to be).

Broken City got a lot of attention because the script was listed on the 2008 Black List. The Black List is an annual list of the “best” unproduced scripts in Hollywood. Now, it should be understood that the concept of what makes something the “best” is always open to interpretation. In the case of the Black List, the “best” is determined by a survey of studio and production executives. The Black List comes out every December and it usually provides an excuse for lazy entertainment writers to write yet another article or blog post bemoaning all of the Hollywood remakes while so many creative and original scripts remain unproduced.

But here’s the thing. Since, I started reviewing films for the Shattered Lens, I’ve had the chance to see several films that were produced from Black List scripts. A few of them have been good but the majority of them have either been likable but forgettable (i.e., Cedar Rapids) or else they’ve been total and complete disasters, like The Beaver. Typically, Black List films tend to be overly complicated, overly ambitious, and never quite as intelligent as they may seem. Frequently, Black List scripts tend to be a bit cutesy in a way that’s effective on paper but annoying on screen. (For example, naming your film’s only good politician Jack Valliant is one of those cutesy concepts that tend to turn up in a lot of Black List scripts.) Several of these scripts, Broken City included, are thrillers that attempt to use the conventions of the genre film to make some larger point about American society. They’ve usually got some sort of dreary political subtext and they always seem to feature a twist that’s surprising only because it doesn’t make any sense.

And that is certainly the case when it comes to Broken City. Don’t get me wrong — the film starts well and Mark Wahlberg is well-cast as the hero. But, with each passing minute of film, things get messier and messier until, finally, it’s impossible to take the film seriously. It’s obvious that director Allen Hughes meant for Broken City to be more than just a thriller. Instead, in much the same way that Charles Dickens used London, Hughes makes a valiant effort to use the film’s New York as a metaphor for our own corrupt society. Under Hughes’s direction, Broken City does a lot without doing any of it that well.

Indeed, if I could give this film an A for effort and ambition, I certainly would. However, in the end, a film should first be judged by what is actually seen on-screen. Taken by that standard, Broken City is a mess, a disorganized collection of themes and subplots that attempts to do so much that it accomplishes very little. Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones both struggle to sound like New Yorkers while Barry Pepper is so overly intense and wired as the saintly Valliant that I would be scared to vote for him. Seriously, he seems like the type who would start a war in the name of social justice and then end up having so much fun killing and conquering that he’d forget what the reason for fighting was in the first place. On a positive note, Mark Wahlberg and Alona Tal have a very likable chemistry and it’s too bad that the rest of the film didn’t take better advantage of it.

Broken City? Broken film.

Other Entries In The 44 Days of Paranoia

Scenes I Love: Saving Private Ryan

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Arleigh

With Veteran’s Day coming to a close I would just like to share a scene that encompasses the sort of people that make up the men and women of our military. While this scene is from Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan I think the sentiment shared by Capt. Miller to his squad works just as well today as we find more and more of our country’s civilians being called in to do their military duty as part of the nation’s Reserve Force.

Yes, the military now is an all-volunteer one, but it doesn’t count those men and women who make up the reservists force. These soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors have done their tour of active duty and decided to join the reserve force on a part-time basis. They do this knowing that when the time comes they might be called to answer the call from the country’s military to take up their uniform once again and deploy to a war zone as they have done so for the past decade in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are doctors, police men and women, lawyers, teachers, construction workers and men and women from every walk of life.

I know that it’s not popular to venerate and admire these people in today’s day and age, because to do so means people like myself and others glorify war and against peace. People have become cynical to the point that they deride these people for getting themselves in the predicament of leaving behind their families and jobs to fight for a war they might not believe in. These people don’t understand the sacrifice and will to do their duty for their country even if its leaders might fail them in the end.

It’s not just soldiers of the US I speak to about celebrating but every man and woman brave and dedicated enough to do their job either as a volunteer or as part of their nation’s conscription call. It’s these very same people who understand the real cost of war and the first to wish for peace, but until the time comes when they’re not needed anymore they will always answer the call to do their duty.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: True Grit (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

True Grit is probably the most straight-forward film that has ever come from the irony-laced imaginations of Joel and Ethan Coen. Perhaps that’s appropriate since the movie is essentially an homage to that most All-American of all movie genres, the western.

Taking place in 1878, True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, a 14 year-old girl (Hailee Stienfeld) whose father is killed by a drifter named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Tom flees into Oklahoma so Mattie goes to Ft. Smith, Arkansas and hires alcoholic, one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track Chaney down. Cogburn agrees and teams up with a Texas ranger named LeBouef (Matt Damon) who is also looking to capture Chaney for an unrelated crime (and to pick an equally unrelated reward). The three of them form an unlikely and uneasy alliance as they search the harsh wilderness for Chaney, who has hooked up with outlaw Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper). Along the way, reality proves itself to be far less prosaic and ideal and justice turns out to be far less straight forward than Mattie had originally assumed.

As you might expect from a Coen Brothers film, there’s a lot of moral ambiguity on display. Cogburn is a former outlaw who is mainly motivated by his own greed while LeBouef is an arrogant blowhard. Meanwhile, the nominal villains often show more humanity than our “heroes.” Even Tom Chaney appears to be more overwhelmed than evil. This is a western where the “good guys” ambush their enemies and shoot them in the back. Throughout the film, the Coens contrast the beautiful cinematography of Roger Deakins and Carter Burwell’s traditional score with the brutality and violence on-screen.

True Grit is a remake of a 1969 film and Jeff Bridges is getting a lot of attention for taking on a role that was originally played by John Wayne. I haven’t seen the original film so I can’t say if Bridges gives a better performance than Wayne. However, to be honest, Bridges probably gives the least interesting performance in the entire film. I know that a lot of people are raving about his work here but I think those raves are more about the actor and less about the performance itself. When people look back on this movie, they won’t remember Rooster Cogburn as much as they’ll remember Jeff Bridges wearing an eyepatch and slurring his words like your alcoholic cousin on the 4th of July. Bridges gives a good enough performance but there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been done just as well (or better) by either Tommy Lee Jones or Joe Don Baker.

If anything, the movie belongs to Steinfeld who gives a wonderfully focused performance as Mattie and who serves as the perfect audience surrogate. As the two main villains, Brolin and Pepper both give excellent performances and the fact that both of them are almost likable only serves to make them all the more effective as “bad” guys.

True Grit is a good movie because the Coen Brothers aren’t capable of doing any less. Technically, it’s probably one of the best films of 2010. Still, the movie left me vaguely disappointed. For what it is — a straight genre piece — it’s a superior work of craftsmanship. However, from the Coens, I’ve come to expect a bit more.