Broken City (2013)

In recent years, the broody Scandinavians have produced a welcome resurgence of interest in noir, originally associated with Hollywood in the 1940s and ‘50s. Led by The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Wallander, the novels were successfully made into television series and feature films. Soon enough, the Brits, obsessed with Nordic noir, began making English-language versions of the moody crime dramas, mostly for the small screen.

With Broken City, director Allen Hughes, who with his brother Albert began their careers as auteurs with a type of urban noir expressed in Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, takes on a very American neo-noir political thriller. But the script from first-time screenwriter Brian Tucker isn’t smart or dark enough to anchor the film’s intended seriousness.

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