I just watched a crappy Mark Wahlberg movie, and I hope this one isn't similar. I expect it won't be, as they sprung for Marky Mark as well as Russell Crow and Catherine Zeta-Jones. So, it's got some potential, but those other two have been in flops of their own.
It's established early on that Mark was a police officer (a detective, no less) who was involved in a shooting. This shooting was under some public scrutiny, but a court decided that there was not enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against him. For his effort, the police chief and the mayor (Crow) fire him. We kind of skip the part where the union reps get involved because no wrongdoing was ever proven against Mark, but we can only assume things worked themselves out. We pick up the story seven years later with Marky Mark as a PI doing basic crap work.
As with most PI movies - intrigue happens. in fact, this is really more than a little cookie-cutter when it comes to the storyline. They try to put a more modern twist on it, but it's ultimately a movie that could very well have had Humphrey Bogart starring in it in the 1940s. I realize it's hard to come up with entirely new material, but that is why you writers get paid the big bucks, isn't it. I suppose you could have just remade an old Bogart movie and cashed in on at least the name recognition, but then you would have to pay royalties, and that's going to hurt your bottom line. Plus, you'd have a standard to be compared against.
So, what we get, then, is a middling storyline with a couple of actors who play simple roles that were designed to be so simplistic so they would not be too stressed or to overwhelm themselves. each other, or the storyline.
It was still a well done movie, but it wasn't a movie that needed to be done at all.
2.25/5