Broken City (2013)

Link: Broken City

Summary: A retired cop is hired by a powerful city mayor to spy on his wife.  But what begins as standard catch-my-wife-cheating-on-me job turns into the uncovering of a much larger and darker political scandal.

Thoughts: I thought this was pretty standard fare for the crime thriller genre; nothing special.  I didn’t quite understand the weird dirty undertones though.  The ending was awful.  Spoiler ahead.  The hero martyring himself by “taking the fall” for a crime doesn’t quite work when he’s actually guilty of the crime he’s taking the fall for.  So basically the ending reveals that this whole time, the hero was just as guilty of cold-blooded murder as the film’s villains.  And we’re supposed to feel that him finally going to jail for it many years later is somehow honorable and courageous?  No.  Basic story principles.  You cannot have a hero be clearly guilty of cold-blooded murder, escape justice for it, and expect us to root for him when we all know perfectly well that escaping justice for it is morally wrong.  That’s not some artistic “moral ambiguity”.  That’s just stupid.  And don’t know, maybe I missed something?

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