Director: Allen Hughes
Writer: Brian Tucker
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones | See full cast and crew.|
Storyline
In New York City, detective Billy Taggart goes to court for the murder of the rapist Mikey Tavarez, but the Mayor Nicholas Hostetler and the Chief of Police Carl Fairbanks vanish with important evidence and Billy is declared not guilty by the judge; however, he leaves the police department. Seven years later, Billy is a private detective and lives with his girlfriend Natalie Barrow, who is an aspiring actress and the sister of Mikey's victim. His secretary Katy Bradshaw (Alona Tal) is trying to collect part of the debts to save their business. In the week of the elections, Hostetler summons Billy and offers $50,000 to investigate his wife, Cathleen Hostetler, whom he believes is having a love affair. Billy discovers that Cathleen is meeting Paul Andrews, who is the coordinator of the campaign of Jack Valliant, the opponent of Hostetler and favorite in the election. When Paul is found dead on the street, Billy finds that he had been double-crossed by Hostetler and he decides to ...User Reviews
I give this a five for
the cast, but a two for the obtuse and predictable script, which
inexplicably appeared on the Black List of best unproduced scripts -- in
which category it should have remained. In development hell for years,
it should at the very least have undergone a major rewrite to simplify
the story (which wanders all over the place and becomes dumber by the
minute) and raised the tone up out of the gutter. Whichever studio execs
placed this on the Black List need to stop sniggering over the dirty
words and earn their money by figuring out just what constitutes a good
script. Wahlberg is always a pleasure to spend time with but the
phoniness of so many of the scenes and the clunkiest car chase ever
defeat even his efforts to entertain. So much of this movie is
predictable and so many scenes are actors simply going through their
paces with inferior material. The gorgeous, gorgeous Catherine Zeta
Jones is totally wasted in this piece of dreck. Somewhere in this movie
there may originally have been a good idea about corruption in the city.
Unfortunately nobody appears to have had the courage to grab it by the
throat, beat it into shape and present it to the public with any wit,
style or originality. Like it says in the header, this is painting by
numbers.
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