Broken City

Mark Wahlberg looks nonplussed from the start in this old-fashioned film noir that feels at odds with its contemporary New York setting. He plays Billy Taggart, dismissed from the NYPD after a controversial shooting and struggling seven years after the incident to make ends meet as a private detective. Russell Crowe mostly just sneers as the mayor who offers him a chunk of money to find out who his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has been seeing. When the other man turns out to be the campaign manager for the mayor's election opponent (Barry Pepper), Taggart slowly realises he's mixed up in more than a case of infidelity. Murder follows and secrets are revealed, but there's little actual surprise here. Director Allen Hughes (The Book of Eli), working here without his brother, Albert) might have got away with the pedestrian story if the characters had been more complex, but even the moral ambiguity surrounding Taggart's past feels like an affectation. The pieces of the puzzle just slot together too easily.