To give you an indication of how long true-life crime drama City of Lies has been sitting on the shelf, when shooting commenced in December 2016, Johnny Depp‘s divorce from Amber Heard hadn’t been finalized yet, while he was still the main man in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, with fifth installment Dead Men Tell No Tales set for release the following summer.
It would be an understatement to say that things have changed dramatically for the actor since then, after he found himself dropped from his iconic role as Captain Jack Sparrow, forced to resign as Fantastic Beasts‘ Grindelwald and was drawn into a lengthy and bitter series of legal battles with his ex-wife. Throughout it all, City of Lies remained lurking in the background, waiting to finally see the light of day.
That day is almost upon us now, with the movie set to hit VOD next Friday, when it’ll probably vanish into the ether in no time at all. Johnny Depp‘s fans might be keen to check it out, but the trailer didn’t promise anything that we haven’t seen from the subgenre a thousand times already, even if the leading man appears to be going all-in as retired cop Russell Poole, burying himself under prosthetics and heavy makeup.
City of Lies follows Poole as he works the homicide investigations of friends turned rivals Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. over the course of two decades, while Forest Whitaker’s veteran reporter assists in any way he can. The movie actually got a theatrical release in Italy back in 2019 before hitting Blu-Ray several months later, so if you know anyone in the country, you can ask them if it’s worth a watch.
