When disgraced cop turned private detective Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) is hired by the mayor of New York (Russell Crowe) to tail his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), he uncovers a city-wide conspiracy of corruption, sex and murder. Those are always fun, aren't they?
With Broken City set for release today, legendary actor and part-time ufologist Russell Crowe talks corruption, maturity and job satisfaction.
On what attracted him to the role:
Well, I had never played the Mayor of New York before (laughs). And I had never gone into, unless I am forgetting something, this kind of political story from the perspective [of] being the politician. I mean I had done stuff like play a journalist when you are pursuing politicians, but I had never actually been the politician. I just liked the bare-faced corruptibility of this man. He was on his own journey; he had gone beyond the point of respecting the office and had started to feather his own nest. I thought that this was an interesting thing to examine and where you have had to have gone to get to that point.
On corruption in politics:
It has been probably quite a difficult period of time the last 40 or 50 years in terms of [the] average person’s relationship with their politicians and the people in public office. But the more intense media scrutiny gets, the more difficult it is to actually be fully effective in politics. So a guy like I am playing in this movie, Nick Hostetler, recalls a different age almost when the power of the position was a little bit more blunt and could be used, and that is how he operates.
I looked into a lot of previous NY mayors and I didn’t find any single one that actually was anywhere near as bad as the character that I play in this movie. But I did get a few bits of colour and magic from the story of Buddy Cianci, the former Mayor of Providence in Rhode Island who was a bit of a character, a bit of a larger than life character. I think Hostetler is probably more old school tie than Buddy Cianci was, but it is an interesting thing the pressure we put on people in public office.
On working with director Allen Hughes:
It was very interesting too working with Allen Hughes on his first project without his brother Albert. The Hughes brothers have made quite a bunch of movies together over the past 20 years. It was interesting to work with him and go through this transition that I went through just recently, where suddenly all the directors I am working with are younger than me. It comes with a different sort of level of responsibility. You find yourself sitting round telling war stories to illustrate the point of something that you are involved in. That was cool. I mean there was a great cast; Mark Wahlberg, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alona Tal, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler, Jeffrey Wright, it was a really cool cast.
On working with younger directors:
There has always been an aspect of my job which is, you are working for a fella and what they are looking for is (for) a series of lieutenants; whether it’s the director of photography or the art director or whatever job it happens to be. When you are working closely with the director and playing lead role it is one of the jobs you take on as well. Quite often I joke that I become the entertainment director on the cruise ship, to make sure that the cast and the crew and enjoying what they are doing. If you are not loving it, then it makes it very difficult to get up at this time in the morning and get your job done (laughs). It is really important that you have positive energy on the set.
Allen Hughes was really responsive to the discussions of how things could be achieved. Sometimes when you haven’t done something, it may look impossible from the outside. But in my situation of having been in this job for quite a long time and over two decades of actually making movies as well on top of other stuff I did before that, situations come up and you have been there before and you know how easy it is to solve it. It is always good to be the one with the easy solve up in your back pocket.
On having fun:
Oh yeah, I love my job. I know that I suit the gig and the gig suits me and every day I am walking towards the camera on set, I have a little smile that starts lifting in my heart. No matter how tough it is or what the conditions are, or the temperature or whatever, I love my gig. I love to make movies and it’s the place I should be. For (the beginning of) 2010-2011, I didn’t work for 14 months or whatever and I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to do. Then I got really lucky and a number of things popped up.
I am going to be on a few screens in the next year or so. Les Mis is already out, Broken City is coming out, then Man of Steel comes out halfway through the year, which is the Superman reboot. Beyond that there is Akiva Goldsman’s Winter’s Tale with Colin Farrell and the biblical epic Noah, Darren Aronofksy’s new movie. There are going to be a few films coming your way!
Broken City is released by Hoyts Distribution / STUDIOCANAL, in cinemas March 7.
