Atom User Reviews for City of Lies
Great movie. will see again. Johnny Depp & Forest Whitaker Outstanding
Metacritic
Ultimately, City of Lies is more James Elroy than docudrama, resulting in a tired police thriller that hitched its wagon to an untenable star.
Even as its ambitions are laudable in casting a wide net over a variety of societal ills, the film can’t quite muster the will to follow through on those ambitions and instead succumbs too often to cliche when complexity was required.
The performances are solid, and the early scenes — recreating the crimes, etc. — are fascinating at a documentary level. Setting up the context is useful, a PD under a cloud and determined to avoid race riots that might return if dirty cops were in on all this. But the rabbit hole closed in for me about an hour in.