Broken City (2013)

An ex-cop PI with a dirty past gets marooned in a FUBAR infidelity case among city elites that results in murder and corrupted land deals. Forget it, Jake, this isn’t sharp dagger classic “Chinatown.” It’s dull spoon thriller “Broken City” with Mark Wahlberg as the dick working for a NYC mayor (Russell Crowe) who’s up for reelection. Mayor’s demand: “Find my wife’s lover,” but he has more in play. Money. The plot is threadbare. Jake Gittes worked for his info. Suffered. Wahlberg’s hero *finds* the bad guy’s plans printed on giant poster board with bold font at a Dumpster. Good actors have saved worse, right? Not this. Crowe plays the mayor in a cartoon mashup of 1970s’ Lex Luther and Donald Trump, with spray-on can orange skin and a dippy toupee. Wahlberg? Autopilot. Director Albert Hughes smart, too a tone for Wahlberg, too brave for the sorry studio? C

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is a 170-minute endurance test thud thud thuding loud as slick CGI and slo-mo explosions litter the screen with buildings, trains, and cars crashing and people running about, always at magic hour. In Bay’s world, every day has five sunsets. The original cast is out, replaced by Mark Wahlberg as a Texas inventor/redneck/father with a Boston accent who happens upon wounded alien robot hero Optimus Prime -– stoic Autobot leader -– and ends up chased by Uncle Sam thugs led by Kelsey Grammer. Our heroes bolt to Utah then Chicago and then Hong Kong, because in China everyone knows kung fu. And Asia means box office coin. Thousands of people die as robots fight and Wahlbeg’s dad saves his pretty teen girl (Nicola Peltz) whose ass Bay glares at, endlessly. The script talks the death of original cinema early on, but “T4” unironically regurgitates films 1-3 and stacks bewildering logic lapses one upon the other. Greatest jaw-dropper: Beijing and Hong Kong within a short drive. Even by the greatest allowance for “dumb” fun and the occasional jolt of a cool image (all those sunsets), Bay’s films are cinema’s death. Soulless, brainless empty robots. D

Pain & Gain (2013)

Even at $26 million and without a trucker robot or asteroid in sight, movie wrecker Michael Bay can take what ought to be a simple crime tale and turns into an ordeal that is so painfully loud and soaked in obnoxious nihilistic testosterone that no sign of life or wit remains by the time the credits finally (finally!) roll. That’s “Pain & Gain.” A character has his skull crushed by a 50-pound weight, I thought, “Lucky bastard.” Mark Wahlberg, Duane Johnson, and Anthony Mackie play three lug head Miami gym freaks who crack a plot to kidnap a local millionaire (Tony Shalhoub) to rob him of fortune, home, cars, and boat. The crime goes sickeningly wrong, and the trio cannot even properly kill the man. Bay is pretending to make a film that satirizes the sick lust of the teen boy American Dream: Hot strippers, constant sex, fast cars, big homes, drugs, and guns, and forgiveness for all, because, hey this is America. But the sick prank: Bay believes this shit is the American Dream, and the right of every red-blooded, gay-bashing man. Even worse, he makes the victims more worthy of death than the criminals. Cinematic diarrhea. F

Ted (2012)

My wife has come home many times to find me watching the so-bad-it’s-brilliant 1980 sci-fi cheese-fest “Flash Gordon.” So I laughed to an embarrassing degree while watching “Ted,” the raunchy comedy about a 35-year-old man named John (Mark Wahlberg) who lives with his toking, swearing, fornicating stuffed teddy bear (voiced by “Family Guy” patriarch Seth McFarlane, who also directed and co-wrote) from childhood. Ted and John constantly watch “Flash,” always stoned, and that drives John’s successful live-in girlfriend (Mina Kunis) off the rails. It’s me or the bear, she says, in a film first. Other film firsts: A hilarious Sam Jones celebration, a scene where Wahlberg calls in a teddy-bear theft to 911, and a new classic bit where the former Marky Mark commits to a room-wrecker fistfight that rivals “Fight Club.” As with “Family Guy,” McFarlane tosses non-stop crude and cruel jokes and pop culture winks, and half stick, the other half miss, and all are juvenile. Yes, he skates the thin line of racist/sexist/homophobic, and satirizing the same. Your tolerance may bend. Mine did not. Best treat: Watching Wahlberg play opposite a fuzzy wuzzy CGI bear that wasn’t even there. B+

Contraband (2012)

Mark Wahlberg headlines “Contraband,” a gritty tale of a smuggler turned legit family man and business owner. The movie opens on a cargo ship as two guys dump a 10-pound bag of coke in the drink during a police raid. Big mistake. The drug bosses (headed by Giovanni Ribisi, looking gaunt and wicked) want $700,000, or else. So back Wahlberg goes to the smuggling biz as one of the dopes –- the other now dead -– is his brother-in-law, and blood is blood. Kate Beckinsale is the wife, Ben Foster the best pal. Director Baltasar Kormákur keeps tense twists and shockers coming, and his climax goes against the grain of every standard revenge flick. It’s smart. Bloody. Violent. And funny as hell as during his complicated, miserable trip to Panama City, Wahlberg’s back-in-the-saddle smuggler comes across a Jackson Pollack, a massive fortune which everyone else mistakes for a drop cloth. Wahlberg is the stalwart hero, but it's both Ribisi and Foster who give the film its hot, dark pulse, the former carrying on business as his daughter watches. B+

The Other Guys (2010)

In every testosterone-filled cops and their partners flick, there’s always the barely in-focus fellow detectives, no name extras taking up space. No one cares if they die by gunfire. Unlikely partners in every way (casting, too) Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are those men, one a paperwork nerd, the other a hot-headed dunce, in “The Other Guys.” When the cliché super cop heroes – played hilariously by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson – die not pulling off a stunt every movie cop pulls off, our “Guys” enter the fray. In a red Prius. Director/co-writer Adam McKay gleefully throws one of those impossible-to-follow coincidence plots at us as a greedy Wall Street tycoon (Steve Coogan) runs amok. Explosions and car chases abound, all sickly ridiculous, and yet not out of place in any “Lethal Weapon” movie. McKay ridicules mega-masculinity, the hot wife syndrome in every guy flick, and the economy. The bad guys get a bailout. Talk about realism. Ferrell is genius uncorking rage, and Wahlberg is a good straight man, although clearly uncomfortable yelling “I’m a peacock!” Still, great laughs. B+