Movie Review: Broken City (2013)
⭐ Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

Broken City sets out to be a gritty political thriller but ends up feeling more like a missed opportunity than a hard-hitting drama. Directed by Allen Hughes and featuring a promising cast—Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta-Jones—the film has all the right ingredients on paper, but something just doesn’t click.

Wahlberg plays Billy Taggart, a disgraced ex-cop turned private investigator hired by the shady New York mayor (Crowe) to tail his wife, suspecting her of infidelity. Naturally, things spiral into a bigger conspiracy involving murder, corruption, and a mayoral election. Sounds juicy, right? Unfortunately, the execution is as flat as Wahlberg’s expression throughout most of the film.

Russell Crowe chews the scenery with his smug political villain routine, and Zeta-Jones seems criminally underused in a role that never fully develops. The plot tries to weave twists and turns, but most of them are predictable, and the pacing drags in the middle like a political debate you didn’t sign up for.

Visually, the film captures a moody urban aesthetic, and there are brief moments where the tension lands. But ultimately, Broken City never fully delivers on the noir-ish intensity it promises. It’s not awful—it’s just forgettable.

If you’re looking for a complex political thriller, there are better cities to get lost in.