Broken City

Year 13, Day 306 - 11/2/21 - Movie #3,968

BEFORE: Happy Election Day!  Today's movie uses the NYC Mayoral Election as a plot point, and I swear, I wasn't even trying to program that, sometimes these things just line up without me even doing anything. I could just roll with it and say this was planned, but there's no need to lie about such things, I can just take them as they happen - coincidences are just as nice, maybe even nicer. 

Dropping "Don't Let Go" turned this portion of the countdown into a Kyle Chandler-thon, as he carries over again from "The Midnight Sky". And here are the rest of the linked actors for November: Mark Wahlberg, Jason Mitchell, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Kidman, Anne Heche, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz, Jay Duplass and Billy Magnussen/Meredith Hagner. That should get me to a Thanksgiving-themed film - I know that only seems like 10 links for 18 films, but there's a few Nicole Kidman films in the line-up. 

THE PLOT: In a city rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed by its most powerful figure: Mayor Nicholas Hostetler. 

AFTER: Hey, I know this may sound crazy, but the mayor of New York is traditionally written as a corrrupt, evil character.  It's just a matter of degrees, really, like HOW corrupt does the movie's screenplay need him to be?  This is a political trope that goes back to Boss Tweed, maybe even before, and I think at this point it might be an original movie idea to showcase a NYC mayor character that WASN'T corrupt. It would be a movie like "Dave", where a normal guy found himself subbing in for the President - I think the last movie that showed an honest man even running for NYC Mayor might have been "Brewster's Millions", but honestly, I'm not sure.  Maybe David Margulies as "Mayor Lenny" in "Ghostbusters?

You can't really say that Hollywood is way off base here, even though this year it was the Governor of New York that got ousted from office, not the NYC Mayor.  Andrew (son of Mario) Cuomo had a notorious feud with Mayor Bill de Blah-sio, basically over who was doing more to combat the spread of COVID on a daily basis.  Well, you've got to stay in office in order to claim that title, so I guess the winner turned out to be Billy D., whose term is up very soon after today's election. You just know he was trying to pull a "Bill Clinton" and get his wife elected to replace him, he'd already appointed her to every city committee and non-electable position that he could, she was the unofficial "co-mayor" despite a very interesting background as a radical lesbian poet and activist. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but it does raise some questions.

De Blasio's been like "Teflon" Bill Clinton in another way, in that no scandal has really stuck to him in the past 8 years - initially he had a reputation for being late for public events, but that's not really an impeachable offense.  Then there were rumors that he treated the NYPD as his personal protection detail, some cops claimed they were asked to drive the mayor's kids to school and also help them move, which seems a bit over the line. There were several campaign finance scandals, but again, nothing ever stuck, so it leads one to wonder what New Yorkers will overlook as long as they get universal pre-K and a relaxation of marijuana enforcement laws. Then he's got the COVID vaccination program to fall back on, so the general report card on De Blasio's going to end up being, "Eh, he was better than Giuliani is now, so who cares?"

So now we're down to two candidates, Democrat Eric Adams, the borough president of Brooklyn, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, radio talk-show host and founder of the Guardian Angels patrol group. NYC is a very Democratic city, so Adams is heavily favored, unless there's a surge of hardcore ever-Trumpers who see Sliwa as a "mini-Trump". But where do they stand on the issues?  Both favor economic recovery initiatives, both want to get more people with mental health issues off the streets, both want to expand gifted programs in schools.  Adams wants to trim back the police budget, but Sliwa wants to hire more officers - considering they're about to lay off the officers who won't get vaccinated, this issue may take care of itself, perhaps they can both cut the budget AND hire more officers as replacements for the non-vaxxed ones.  Adams wants to add more bike lanes, but Sliwa wants to remove the ones we have - hmm, it's pretty tempting for me to support Sliwa here, because screw the hipster cyclists.  But Adams wants to keep vaccine mandates for city workers and indoor dining, Sliwa would dump both.  OK, now I hope Adams wins, but honestly, not enough to run out and vote. 

(BREAK)

OK, I'm back, we just went to vote - our polling place is a few blocks away, unlike in the 2020 Presidential Election when we voted early and therefore had to drive to a special place, further away. The whole process this time took about 20 minutes, and that was including walking there and back, so not a ton of people voting today, at least not at 3 pm. But now we've done our civic duty for another year, we can breathe easy until the midterms next time, and the campaigning for that probably starts next week. Looks like Eric Adams will be the next mayor of NYC, but it could be months before his first corruption scandal, I wonder what it will be. Anyway, back to the fictional mayor from "Broken City". 

Mayor Nicholas Hostetler hires Billy Taggart, an ex-cop (now working as a private investigator) to follow his wife, to find out who she's sleeping with.  This just happens to be an ex-cop who was involved in a racial shooting in the projects, but was cleared of wrongdoing on a technicality, with apparent help from the mayor. Seven years later, it seems the mayor's cashing in on the favor he did for Taggart in order to get the dirt on his own wife. Why the mayor can't just ASK his wife, or get some cops to tail her, is all a bit unclear. But perhaps he wants to be discreet - Taggart follows her and sees her meeting several times with the campaign manager of the other candidate, the mayor's rival, so naturally he assumes they're having an affair. (But, is that really what's taking place?)

Before handing over the photos of the mayor's wife, the mayor's wife asks Taggart for help, suggesting that things may not be what they seem.  However, Taggart ignores her and turns in his evidence. Soon after, that campaign manager turns up dead, and Taggart has to work with his old boss, the police commissioner, to figure out what really happened, and who killed the campaign manager.  The rival candidate was the last person to see him alive, but he's very drunk, so naturally Taggart needs to sober him up - with a bit of waterboarding?  It's a choice, I guess - there's no time to lose, the election's coming up in just a few days.  

Meanwhile, Taggart's broken up with his girlfriend after her independent film debut, she told him that the love scene was going to be artistic, but it turned out to be quite graphic. Naturally Taggart's reaction was to turn to alcohol, after seven years of sobriety, and cause a scene at the after-party. This did not go over well. But can he get sober again in time to figure out who's responsible for the campaign manager's death, the connection to whatever shady deal the mayor has going on at the housing project, and also save his relationship?  Well, I guess two out of three ain't bad. 

I don't want to give away too much here, and I don't believe that I have, but I think in the end there were just too many coincidences, too many things tied together that didn't necessarily have to be tied together. Sure, eventually the corrupt politicians have to face the music, but won't they just be replaced by other corrupt politicians?  Or am I being too cynical, here on Election Day? You tell me. This film reminded me of "Spenser Confidential", which I watched in January, maybe because in both films, Mark Wahlberg played an ex-cop working as a P.I., only that film was much more fun than this one - plus it was set in Boston, where Wahlberg is from, not New York. 

I did like the depiction of a car chase through NYC - which clearly demonstrated why a typical action-movie car chase through NYC just wouldn't work. Think about it, you can't go more than two blocks in NYC without hitting a light, or ending up behind a car that's trying to make a turn, or on some block where everyone's double-parked, so the traffic's all got to funnel down to one lane.  So how could there possibly be a car chase through Manhattan?  This film gets it exactly right, in no more than three blocks, either one car or the other's going to crash into SOMETHING, and that's going to cut your chase scene very short. Points for that, at least. 

Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last heard in "Scoob!"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "State of Play"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "Lay the Favorite"), Barry Pepper (last seen in "Spielberg"), Natalie Martinez (last seen in "End of Watch"), Jeffrey Wright (last heard in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Alona Tal (last seen in "Opening Night"), Michael Beach (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), James Ransone (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Justin Chambers (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Gregory Jbara, Britney Theriot, Luis Tolentino, Tony Bentley (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Andrea Frankle (last seen in "Irresistible"), William Ragsdale, Dana Gourrier (last seen in "Midnight Special"), Teri Wyble (last seen in "The Hunt"), John W. Houghtaling, Ric Reitz (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Lydia Hull, Chance Kelly (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Jason Mitchell (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), with cameos from Annika Pergament (last seen in "The Comedian"), J.D. Evermore (last seen in Still Waiting...")

RATING: 5 out of 10 uncollected fees from clients