‘This could be devastating for us…’
It’s always frustrating when an excellent performance is trapped in a mediocre movie. Mark Wahlberg is inconsistent as an actor, we are talking about a man who has starred in both the worst Transformers movie and The Happening after all, but when he is good, as in The Departed, for example, he is very good. The Yards sees him utilise his trademark blank stare to great effect. It’s just a shame the film going on around him is pretty tedious…
Leo Handler (Wahlberg) is out on parole for an unspecified crime and he just wants to live a quiet life. Family friend Willie Gutierrez (Joaquin Phoenix) has other ideas, however. He wants to bring Leo in on a corruption scam involving repair work on the New York subway system headed up by crooked business owner Frank Olchin (James Caan). Elsewhere, Willie, and Leo’s cousin Erica (Charlize Theron) are having relationship problems.
The Yards feels like it could be the pilot of a gritty TV show. Writer-director James Gray (he shares a co-writing credit with Matt Reeves of The Batman fame) successfully builds a world that feels lived in and authentic, but I’m not sure if corruption in the awarding of repair contracts is meaty enough subject matter for a two-hour feature film, and that’s the problem here – the plot is too slight. Not enough happens. The dialogue isn’t interesting enough to sustain the lack of action, Phoenix gives a strangely subdued performance and Theron is criminally underused. It’s a shame because Wahlberg delivers some of his best work, particularly in the film’s far-from-explosive third act, but ultimately it’s not enough to lift The Yards about the classification of ‘average’.
Fans of The Wire and The Sopranos might find something to enjoy here but more likely they will just wish that they were watching The Wire or The Sopranos instead. Skip this one.
