Back during Oscar season Mark Wahlberg was crossing his fingers that heat from The Fighter would end up helping out his other passion projects, notably including Broken City. A directorial gig for Allen Hughes, the film is based from a black-listed script that sports a noirish story about a private investigator getting involved with murder and infidelity involving a mayor. Now the apparent quality of the script has drawn in Russell Crowe, who will play said mayor of said broken city.
With a $60m budget, this is reasonably well-funded detective thriller, though I know not everyone is particularly enamored with the films of Allen Hughes. I’ve always felt he was one step short of being a really interesting filmmaker, and his films range from solid to pretty good to almost great. Maybe a nice gritty urban thriller with strong actors and a possibly amazing script are what he needs to blow socks off.
I can definitely see Russell Crowe playing a wonderful sleazy mayor, though Wahlburg as a P.I/noir hero seems a little like Max Payne/wish-fulfillment territory. I love Wahlberg in the right part, but he sets off my “playing pretend” radar when playing the wrong kind of tough guy.
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(via THR)