The Yards (2000)

Recently released from jail, Mark Wahlberg accepts a job working with his friend Joaquin Phoenix as muscle for his aunt’s new husband James Caan’s railway car company. It’s hard to watch any gangster work, especially The Sopranos, and not know about the corruption in the sanitation business, but it wasn’t until A Most Violent Year and now this film that I realized it oozes through all contract oriented services in New York. With an impressive cast that also includes Charlize Theron, Faye Dunaway, and Ellen Burstyn, it generally follows the expected trajectory of similar stories. Wahlberg’s simple-minded, wide eyed schtick gets old after awhile which makes him a mostly unappealing protagonist.