Sex In The City-Adrien Brody’s “Manhattan Night” (2016)-A Film Review   

DVD Review 

By Sam Lowell 

Manhattan Night, starring Adrien Brody, Yvonne Strahovski, Jennifer Beals, 2016     

A long time ago somebody penned the phrase “New York the city with eight million people, and eight million stories” and while I am not quite sure if that number is still valid the idea of there being a lot of stories, stories moreover that people want to hear about, read about forms the basic premise behind the semi-thriller film under review Manhattan Night. Throw a little sex in, well maybe a lot of sex, and you have a story that will turn heads even in seen it all, heard it all jaded New York City. Throw in a little mystery and you will draw the curious in as well.

Sex, mystery and unknown reactions to tragedy or the starling are what the narrator of the film, Porter Wren, played by Adrien Brody, a hard-working, hard-scrambling “slice of life” print news reporter (yeah, I know a dying breed) for a big just taken over by a media magnate, Hobbs, newspaper is drawn into once he meets one Carol Crowley, played by fetching and sexy Yvonne Strahovsk, at a party. Drawn into investigating the death, a death that has all the earmarks of murder, of her famous high-end creative monster director husband found dead, very dead, in an abandoned recently torn down building lot. Porter at first hesitant to jump into the story is dragged in to investigating the death not exactly kicking and screaming once our Carol puts the big seductive play on. Of course Porter had this other little problem of being a seemingly devoted husband and really devoted father to muddy the waters. Still he took the bait with his eyes wide open although in the end Carol was just using her sexual prowess to get what she wanted.     

As Porter gets drawn in further he finds out that her husband, Simon, and Carol were into games, some sexual and others of an ordinary variety. The important sexual one though is a dare the kinky and troubled Simon put to Carol about having sex with a stranger. It turned out that the stranger is the elderly media mogul Hobbs who is now Porter’s boss. The boss in turn has some deep dark sexual secrets which he wants kept quiet. See old kinky Simon recorded the sexual encounter between Simon and the magnate and Carol is setting up a nice little blackmail run to keep her in dough. Mistake, big mistake, so Porter is forced to get that memory card concerning the indiscreet encounter or else by the boss. Eventually Porter under serious duress gets the card back from Carol and gives said card back to the boss. End of story.

Well not quite since the well-connected Hobbs gives Porter a key which will help him unravel the mystery of Simon’s death. Seems that Carol too had a deep dark secret she had confessed to Hobbs but would not reveal to Simon. Bad move, very bad move, you didn’t not tell Simon something when he wants to hear it. Moreover he had another of those infernal memory cards of an incident that would be curtain’s for Carol. To find out Carol’s secret which she does relate to Porter later after giving he had given her the incriminating card in return for her not bothering his family check this film out. Yeah, eight million stories although not all of them good and not all of them about sexual intrigue.  Adrien Brody is, well, Adrien Brody with all his carrying the sorrows of the world face and mannerisms in this one which is good, very good.