Review: Broken City and Last Stand

NEW YORK (WABC) -- For me to like a picture it must meet minimum standards of believability and neither of these new ones really do.

"Broken City" has plot holes big enough to drive a truck though and the gaps are going to be even more obvious to us given that it's set right here in our city, but I've seen worse movies,

The new thriller stretches credibility to the breaking point and beyond, but still managed to entertain me mainly because Russell Crowe as a corrupt mayor and Mark Wahlberg playing a disgraced ex-cop- are good together.

The mayor hires the private investigator to spy on his wife played by Catherine Zeta Jones. What looks like cheating is a smokescreen for political corruption on a grand scale.

The plot depends on Crowe being more approachable than a real mayor can be given all of the security required when he moves around the city. Wahlberg's character doesn't drink, then does with no down-side. There just so many circumstances that just couldn't happen in real life, but if you're willing to suspend your disbelief, have at it.

While we're on the subject of disbelief& Arnold Schwarzenegger is determined to make a 'Last Stand' in the career that made him famous before he was the "governator" of California.

Schwarzenegger plays a sheriff who goes old school to stop the drug smugglers. His role amounts to a vanity production and a goof: he doesn't take it seriously so you shouldn't either, but I say this mix of action and laughs is a testament to a movie star's need to stay front and center, when retirement would probably be the safer option.

Watching him try to come-up with new lines to match "I'll be back" and the like is a little creepy given he is now 65 years of age, but leaving the theater I heard one moviegoer tell his friend "it's more funny than anything else." Funny, and a little sad.

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