Film Review: "Broken City" (2013)After splitting with his twin brother Albert Hughes, with whom he started out directing in 1992 at an age of just twenty delivering a powerful boys-in-the-hood-study "Menace II Society" (1993), Director Allen Hughes takes on a needlessly written original script by Brian Tucker, which attracted two major Hollywood actors Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg to confront each other in the Mayor's office of New York City unwinding a story of false moves, living lies and a fulfilling redemption theme for the character of Billy Taggart (Wahlberg), who started out as NYPD detective and ending up as private investigator, losing everything he stands for in just seven years of his life before being able to prove foul play and corruption between the walls of City Hall, under the active support by chief inspector Carl Fairbanks, portrayed in dignified manner by Jeffrey Wright; in an unsatisfying showdown confrontation between the character of Billy Taggart and Mayor Hostetler, performed by even more energy-spreading Russell Crowe, who seemed to have been up for a major scene in recent motion picture history with Mark Wahlberg, which unfortunately could not been pin pointed by Director Allen Hughes, who leaves an unless capable cinematographer Ben Seresin in encircling Steadicam motions for the off-setting scene between the opponents in the first Act of the movie to come to an total halt for the resolution scene in Act 3, which takes place again in an unimaginatively office interior designed by Tom Duffield, who could not connect to former neo-noir extravaganza as art director for Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) or even years later as production designer for Director Gore Verbinski's remake of "The Ring" in 2002; leaving "Broken City" in an unrepeatable constellation of ready-to-go actors, who actually still save the movie to be a total fall-out, thanks additionally to Catherine Zeta-Jones and Barry Pepper; a further undecided director, who hardly finds his stand-alone signature after the brother's departure from "The Book of Eli" (2010) by for example just letting the leads improvise to a maximum of full frontal confrontations in closed up sets; nail-biting producers, all up front Arnon Milchan, who needed to keep going fast off to the next picture to not lose a streak of otherwise selling seat-filling movies; keeping "Broken City" in remains as the movie directed by Allen Hughes in limbo of mediocrity with the final twist to wish for.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

(28%) Guess what? Politics is dirty, filled with rich jerks using their heightened influence to push the rules to one side so they can do whatever they want. That's the already well known message here with zero of anything else to make this well-cast flop anything more than a limp, quite dull miss-hit. This has three actors who are more than capable to lead a film by themselves, yet this feels oddly directionless, uninteresting, and tepid. What also doesn't help is the fact that this isn't meaty enough to pass as a decent political crime drama, and its way too slow to be an action flick or a thriller. Mark Wahlberg looks a bit lost, Russell Crowe is in second gear, and Zeta-Jones's character could have been played by any actress. By the end it becomes all too clear why this lasted in cinemas for one single week only. Pity those who ventured to pay money to see it.

Broken City is a decent movie with an average storyline and a good cast that sadly don't deliver as well as they could have.The film lacks any bit of originality to make it enjoyable, it follows a very safe and formulaic story,which makes it very underwhelming as basically every move the characters make is predictable.I felt like it could have been better if the actors put more energy in to their performances,no one really seemed that interested,as far as I know,Mark Wahlberg only wanted to produce this film and didn't want to play this character,and it really shows in his acting,Russell Crowe was the only person that seemed to be really enjoying his role and getting sucked in to the character. Predictable and fairly boring,Broken City has its moments and its certainly not an awful movie,but it simply isn't interesting enough to recommend. A struggling private eye accepts a lucrative job from New York's mayor.Best Performance: Russell Crowe Worst Performance: Barry Pepper

You wouldn't miss a thing, if you miss this movie. Even Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe don't help. Yeah, good actors are in the cast, so what!? Story line doesn't go beyond being a mediocre, another corruption story with some action here and there...Sometimes I even lost track of what's going on, because it wasn't written well, I guess.Nothing new to offer... Nothing interesting... No exceptional acting...I don't even have anything else to say really to finish up this review... I wish IMDb didn't have this rule to finish up a review for certain numbers of lines. When it's a waste of time to watch the movie, it's even harder to write a review about it.