It would be easy to dismiss this as an $84 million waste of time. Going with the motto, ‘bigger is better’, Red 2 (penned by Jon and Erich Hoeber and based on Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s Marvel characters) can never be accused of being dull or slow, but they might have gone a bit too big.
There’s not much groundbreaking going on in Broken City, but, to be fair, there is a quality to this run-of-the-mill genre picture that keeps you engaged through to its final credits. In part, this can boiled down to its director, Allen Hughes, and the film’s star-studded supporting cast.
In many ways, Side Effects is the perfect swan song for Soderbergh. Like many the films in his catalog, it is impeccably made, with the director showing his panache for composition, framing and editing throughout.