Movie Review

16 Blocks

"16 Blocks" begins in New York where burnout cop Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) has been assigned to transport a witness to court within two hours, because after that, the jury goes home for the day. The witness turns out to be Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), a career criminal who saw shady stuff going down and the NYPD involved in said "stuff.? Eddie has dreams of one day opening up his own bakery in Seatle, only that?s if he can survive this day. It doesn?t take long before Jack and Eddie are attacked by renegade cops who are willing to stop at nothing to silence Eddie before he can testify. But, for the sake of a movie, Jack decides to help Eddie instead of just throwing him to his former partner Frank Nugent (David Morse) and his cronies. The whole thing becomes a big chase through New York as Jack desperately tries to get Eddie on the witness stand before Frank kills him.

This movie is filled with clich?s like the drunken rundown cop, the motor-mouth accomplice; the reliance on the clock to tell us how much time is left before the deadline. There are also those really stupid moves characters make in order to keep the movie moving or to incriminate themselves in the end. And not to mention the endless number of times the villains and the drunken cop meet in order to just talk about what?s right and wrong. Only the biggest of all this movie?s problems is that it?s nothing but bullets. If you were to take out all the shootouts, stupidity, and clich?s, this would be a twenty-minute movie, and those twenty minutes are probably the best this movie has to offer. A confrontation in a bar and a bus standoff are really the only clever places this movie chooses to go. Otherwise, it?s just one big, long, repetitious chase in which nothing worthy of note really happens.

What trashes this movie further is that the buddy-film element that is supposed to be going on between Jack and Eddie never seems to progress. Willis just looks bored and Def?s performance is relegated to a grating, nasally voice that makes him sound like a cartoon. These guys are a definitive odd-couple but throughout their bonding, nothing seems to click as far as chemistry is concerned. By the time we get to the "cute" ending, their friendship just looks laughably sentimental and unbelievable. As far as the performances go, Morse brings the movie up a notch with a cold, "I?ll do anything to save my own ass" performance that at least makes his scenes suspenseful.

"16 Blocks" is bottom of the barrel, a movie that is either too stupid, clich?d, or boring to waste time on. Very few interesting things happen and the stuff that does is few and far between. Bruce Willis will occasionally do a movie that is stunning in its badness ? this is one of those times. With names like his, director Richard Donner, and Mos Def, I figured "16 Blocks" would be the year?s first big thriller. What a letdown it was to find out that it?s just another witless retread of other action movies.

Craig's Grade: D

A	10.9%
B	41.8%
C	31.8%
D	15.3%
F	0.3%