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(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Pictures)
Sun 15 December 2024 5:00, UK
To call the career of Mark Wahlberg inconsistent would be putting things lightly. He’s been in some highly acclaimed movies, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Then again, The Happening, the Planet of the Apes remake, and two stints in Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ series have done his image no favours. Say what you will, but Marky Mark knows how to keep us on our toes
One of his films that’s easy to overlook is 2013’s Broken City. A cop drama directed by Allan Hughes, Wahlberg stars as Billy Taggart, a private detective hired by the mayor of New York City (Russell Crowe) to look into the affairs of his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). The three major players do a decent job with the script and the moody atmosphere of New York’s underbelly is nice, but there isn’t much here that you can’t find somewhere else. However, if you ask Mark Wahlberg, he’ll tell you a very different story.
In an interview with BlackFilm to promote the movie, the actor waxed lyrical about his latest project. “It was so well written,” he said of the script. “It reminded me of the great movies like Chinatown that I grew up watching. I knew it would attract serious talent because all the parts were so rich and well-written that we were able to get the likes of Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Jeffrey Wright, and Barry Pepper and Kyle Chandler. It’s a pretty spectacular cast and all the roles are really great. Brian Tucker did an amazing job in writing the screenplay.”
You can see why Wahlberg might draw comparisons between his film and Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic. Jack Nicholson’s JJ ‘Jake’ Gittes is also a PI, and both movies have a noir-y feel to them. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities begin and end. Chinatown is set in California in the past, whilst Broken City is a contemporary movie set in the Big Apple. And then there are the reviews.
Chinatown is utterly beloved. It sits at a whopping 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and was a big hit at the Oscars, with 11 nominations to its name. Sure, it only won one (‘Best Original Screenplay’), but that is still an impressive number. As for Broken City, the press were less kind. Reviews for the Wahlberg picture were not pretty, as critics complained about everything from its boring script to its complicated set-up to its derivative nature.
It’s not surprising that Wahlberg went so hard on this film, as he was not only one of its stars but also a producer. He said all the right things in promoting it, failing to get fans through the doors – it grossed $34.7million on a budget of $35-56.8million – and critics onside.
The saddest part of all of this is that Wahlberg sounded genuine through this interview. He spoke heartily about what makes a good thriller; “the story, the writing, and the execution from characters. This is something that has some twists and turns that you don’t expect. Even when you know what’s going on, there’s more at stake. The fact this guy would go out there and risk his freedom, it moves people.” Unfortunately, none of this was present in the finished project.
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