REVIEW - BROKEN CITY

This film made me want to get drunk, have gay sex and demolish a public housing project. All in protest. Maybe a point is being made in Broken City - maybe all these cliches and soundbites and duplicate parts from other films have been assembled to make a statement. Like, this is what we're left with. There are no more original thoughts in the world. The medium of cinema is dead. Well, if the future of cinema looks at all like Broken City, then I fucking hope it is. Like all other low-rent thrillers these days, this one has a bland, stale plot jazzed up by random combinations of long words which the writer probably doesn't understand, an array of character actors taking a pay cheque, and some dud action sequences in case the target demographic was getting worried that no-one had gotten killed yet. Would that every one of this band of blockheads had been killed. The script lurches in an out of different characters, delivering spurts of plot (most of which went in one ear and out my arse), spurts of action, spurts of 'cop husband neglects wife and then resumes alcoholism when she leaves him' drama familiar to anyone over the age of six, and generous spurts of homophobia, which only sound even more encouraging when it's Mark Wahlberg speaking them! Catherine Zeta-Jones provides one lone source of enjoyment, finally back in a role that suits her, but once Marky Mark has had enough of her, then apparently so have we. I've had enough of this film, and others like it. All the principal actors in Broken City ought to have taken a long look at the script, and an even longer look at their bloated bank accounts, and respectfully (or otherwise) declined.