Russell Crowe plays Mayor Hostetler, who has been the Mayor of New York City for a couple of terms.During a heated election campaign, Hostetler wants to find out if his wife is messing around with another guy. He calls in a former cop called Billy Taggart , played by Wahlberg. Taggart is a Private Investigator. He is paid $50,000 by the Mayor to find out if Mrs. Hostetler is fooling around with another man. Why Taggart? Well, he was forced to quit his cop job because he was involved in a questionable shooting. He shot a man who had assaulted and murdered his wife's sister. So the Mayor knew that he would not be afraid to bend the rules.
The detective gets pictures of the Mayor's wife (played by Catherine Zeta Jones), meeting another man, and the explosive truth is that she is meeting the head of the opposition's political campaign. Is it an affair, or something more sinister?
Soon, the Private Detective finds that the Mayor has no scruples whatever. He finds that the Mayor's competitor is not a saint. He finds out that the Mayor's wife is different than he assumed; though not any purer. Finally, he finds out that his own wife, an actress, is less than she appears and that his secretary is far more than she appears. Then, when the campaign manager winds up dead outside the opposition candidate's house, we begin to see why the Mayor is such a formidable adversary. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Trust me, if the City wasn't broke, this Mayor could break it.
Taggart also finds out that a huge housing complex is part of a corrupt infrastructure that is like a living organism. He finds himself trapped in Hostetler's web and about to go to prison for murder. Can he extricate himself? Will the pressures of life drive him back into the bottle?
Russell Crowe is one of the best actors of his generation and any movie he appears in, is a must-see for me. He plays a bad guy very well and plays a good guy even better. Furthermore, I think this is the best acting job I have seen by Wahlberg. Catherine Zeta Jones doesn't have a huge role in the film but she does her part quite well. This show is well acted and well directed. It seems a little slow in spots, but it is worth seeing. If the timing had worked out differently, I might have seen the new Schwarzenegger film called Last Stand. Maybe I'll see it next weekend.
I saw a preview of a film with Sandra Bullock in it today. She plays a federal agent whose prissy, regimented style is upset by a new partner who is almost a lunatic. It looks really funny. I think the title is The Heat. Watch for that one.
About that picture... Today, we ate at a local buffet called Ryan's, a chain. They have a huge selection and I ate until my curly tail was showing. It's a joke. I don't have a curly tail, I swear it. They had some little place mats with puzzles on them, for kids, you know? My wife forced me to take one. Ha, ha.
I was working it while I ate, as you can see. I never read directions, which is why I am a sorry gamer. Carley looks over at my work and points out some things. To whit:
1) I was supposed to pick out words that were foods. There was a list of the foods underneath the jumbled letters. This is okay but words like 'bra' and 'gem' were woefully bad choices. Also, I used letters that were out of order and diagonal and other stuff, out of the norm. Then she said that I misspelled carrots in the lower left. She wasn't real impressed with my "connect the dots" picture, either. It was supposed to look like a banana, an orange and an apple. Hey, I only had a green crayon. Did Van Gogh have to work under these conditions? Nooooooo!
The waitress came by during this discussion and patted my wife on the shoulder sympathetically, as though she thought I might be impaired. She did offer to get me a dish of gummy bears, so I left her a nice tip.
Well, that was my day, here at the author's green retreat.
I'm CE Wills.
P.S. On a more serious note, Baseball lost some its all-time greats today. Earl Weaver, the great Orioles manager, and Stan 'The Man' Musial have passed away. I was just a child when I saw Musial play, but he was really special. My condolences to their loved ones.
P.P.S. I think that the Baltimore Ravens and the Atlanta Falcons will win tomorrow's NFL games. No matter who wins, it should be a great Super Bowl.
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