“The Happening” was a much better film than “Broken City.” I am of course referring to the train wreck that is the 2008 movie starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by noted hack M. Night Shyamalan.

In that film, Wahlberg gives what can best be described as a tour de force performance playing a school teacher who just doesn’t know how to emote even in the face of uncertain death by plants.

“Broken City” reminds me so much of that Mark Wahlberg, the one who clearly peaked in “The Departed” and is completely cruising on whatever charms he has left.

I remember a time when it was possible to admire the acting craft of this particular celebrity. Gone are the days of Dirk Diggler, Charlie Croker, Vince Papale and Dignam. Mark Wahlberg is beyond saving at this point and is merely slumming it until he has satiated his need to be a leading man.

If 2013 is any indication we will see him play a Navy seal, a juicehead and an undercover agent. Way to stretch yourself Mark.

All this trashing aside for Wahlberg, “Broken City” is the exact type of film you would see smack dab in the middle of January, the hallowed dumping ground for movie studios.

The film opens up with police officer Billy Taggert having shot in cold blood a teenaged youth whom we later learned raped and murdered a girl in the neighborhood and got off on a technicality. Taggert goes outside the law simply because he was friends to the family of the slain girl.

In a twist of irony, one of many in this fatuous farce of a movie, Taggert goes unpunished for his crime because some evidence was misplaced, which comes into play later in the movie thus fulfilling Chekhov’s gun.

Fast-forward seven years and Taggert has become a private eye for hire taking photos of cheating spouses. Taggert is now conveniently involved in a relationship with the sister to the murdered girl, which totally is not weird or creepy at all considering their age differences.

Taggert is then called upon by the mayor of New York to take photos of his wife, whom he claims is cheating.

“Broken City” begins as a possible police procedural and ends as one awful political thriller. What infuriates me most is that it is not an irredeemable movie; there were many opportunities to turn the ship around and make a solid action movie or thriller.

Instead what comes together is a completely boring and forgettable excuse of a film. Were it not for Russell Crowe hamming it up as a corrupt politician or Barry Pepper playing his best Bobby Kennedy, I would not have stayed through the whole way.

Let’s not even get started on how useless the female characters are, Catherine Zeta-Jones playing a less than loving wife with ulterior motives never fully fleshed out or Natalie Martinez playing an indie actress just beginning to get her big break.

Oddly enough they have a movie within the movie and they were both about on par to be honest. Hopefully in the near future all these actors involved will be asked about what they thought of “Broken City” and their response would be, I was in that?