Sometimes all you really want to do is lose yourself in a world of muted colors and confusing morality, a world where everyone is corrupt and dames got gams to nowheresville (or something like that). Broken City tries to immerse you in a dark, mysterious city of complexity and murder, but it ultimately feels pretty typical. The movie primarily focuses on William “Billy” Taggert (Mark Wahlberg at his most Mark Wahlberg-iest), a disgraced former New York City cop now working as a private investigator (which means taking pictures of cheating spouses). Poor Billy killed a criminal that got off the hook, but that did end up getting him a beautiful girlfriend — the sister of the criminal’s victim. After seven years, Billy gets hired by slick mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe, hamming it up admirably) to follow the mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones, perfect for the role) and take photos. That’s all he’s good for anymore, right? Wait, wait, I’m inserting more complexity than the movie ends up having. Sorry.

It’s all because there’s a mayoral election coming up, the mayor facing off against ludicrously “decent” Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper), having the silliest apt name since Jean-Claude Van Damme’s evil Vilain from last year’s The Expendables 2 (The Expendablest). Kyle Chandler plays Valliant’s campaign manager, who may be up to something, and Jeffrey Wright plays the police commissioner, who also might be up to something. As you might expect, Billy bites off more than he expects and gets involved in some classic real estate scams, murder, car chases, and romantic troubles, all set in the classically dark aesthetic you’d expect from something trying to be a classic noir, hard-boiled detective tale. Unfortunately, the mystery ends up being both overly simplistic and overly complicated. Real estate is boring already, and the movie tries and fails to make it interesting.

The problem with the movie is really that it’s trying to be better than it can handle. Subplots about alcoholism and the acting debut of Billy’s girlfriend are intended to add pathos, but ultimately add “so … what’s the point again?”. Kyle Chandler, doing the best acting in the movie, is also in it the least. Nearly everyone is doing a fun job acting in their expected roles here, predictable though they are, but the movie gets more and more predictable and flat as it goes. If it just embraced the silliness inherent in itself, that’d be a different thing altogether. But it’s trying so hard to be an important, complex story, and totally fails at that. Mark Wahlberg works better when he doesn’t need to express complicated emotions, like when he’s working with his pretty great assistant (Alona Tal).

Sure, there are some funny lines and some winning performances. But really, the movie’s biggest crime is being forgettable. You won’t hate yourself or the movie after leaving, but you just won’t particularly care about it. It’s like a pastiche of detective and crime thrillers all thrown together, decent moments without anything meaty behind it. Not terrible, but just … okay.

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My new year started off awesomely. Mark Wahlberg stopped in Philadelphia for a screening of Broken City. He not only took a good minute to greet the fans outside, but once inside the Prince Music Theater he literally took time to answer every single blogger’s question and to take pictures with every single member of the press core and their friends. And, he did so incredibly casually. Sure, walking the red carpet, chatting with press and talking to local politicians/celebrities is his job, but it doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy it. He greeted Mayor Nutter and Sharon Pinkenson of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office like old friends and took a good five minutes to chat with an extreme fan who waited beside me on the press line for an hour and described her incredible love of him in the interim. Is he incredibly fit? Hell, yes. While rocking a short-sleeved black polo I learned that he has the most well-defined forearms ever.

What made it even better included seeing Allen Hughes of the Hughes brothers, who also directed this film, join in the fun. Before the Cohen and Nolan brothers took over, the Hughes brothers rocked it with Menace II Society and Dead Presidents in the 90s. Halfway through the press flashing, Allen jokingly took out his camera and took pictures of us as we took pictures of him.

Even if Mark Wahlberg and Allen Hughes weren’t there, I definitely had an awesome time talking to my fellow on-line media writers. Everyone just seemed incredibly positive and incredibly pumped. And, I won’t lie, a good many of us couldn’t stop singing “Good Vibrations.” I finally understood the SNL “Talk to Animals“/”Say Hi to Your Mother For Me” skit. Mark is literally the type of guy who will just walk from person to person and have an invested conversation with each of them.

Broken City stars Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta-Jones and is directed by Allen Hughes. It opens January 18th, nation-wide.