Monday, December 26, 2022

City Hall (1996)

IMDb plot summary: The accidental shooting of a boy in New York leads to an investigation by the Deputy Mayor, and unexpectedly far-reaching consequences.
Directed by Harold Becker. Starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, and Bridget Fonda.

City Hall stars Al Pacino as the Mayor of New York City and John Cusack as his ambitious Deputy Mayor who just wants to make real change in the city. Things get complicated when an NYPD officer is involved in a shooting with a drug dealer that ends up taking the life of a nearby child, and questions about what the officer was doing there in the first place start revealing some corruption beneath. It's hard for me to watch one of these gritty political police dramas now and not immediately draw lines to Sidney Lumet's work, as that was one of the themes he explored most. This is a pretty mediocre exploration of the theme, aside from a medium-interesting last-minute reveal that adds a little oomph to it. Cusack's Louisiana persona doesn't work for me most of the time, and as is too frequently the case with this kind of movie, the trail gets so windy that it's hard to remember at the end why we were supposed to care about it to begin with. I'm sure it scratches a particular itch for some movie fans, but I found it pretty lackluster.

How it entered my Flickchart:
City Hall < Forever Young
City Hall < Bounce
City Hall > A Fistful of Dollars
City Hall > Graveyard of Honor
City Hall > Antichrist
City Hall < Live-In Maid
City Hall > Deceived
City Hall > Giant
City Hall < Deliverance
City Hall < The Name of the Rose
City Hall > The King
City Hall > Hour of the Wolf
Final spot: #2873 out of 3738, or 23%.

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