16 Blocks

16 Blocks
David DuPuy

16 Blocks shoots itself in the foot with a typical Hollywood misfire: the overblown final sequences. Alcoholic detective Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) escorts witness Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) sixteen blocks to testify as a grand jury witness, before he can hit the bottom of a bottle again. However, his corrupt, former partners have other designs.

Mosley and Bunker start running from block four. Exiting a liquor store in the beginning of his sixteen block route, Mosley shoots the first assassin of the day. Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Lethal Weapon, Superman II) absorbingly shows Mosley's return to sobriety with disoriented perspective, suppressed sound and slow motion. Now a circuitous route former colleagues headed by Det. Frank Nugent (David Mourse) hunt Eddie for the danger he poses, and the separate histories of the quarry unfolds.

The excitement of the film, penned by screenwriter Richard Wenk, is contained in the struggle and stories of change of the two men. New York feels tough, seedy and close again, with Chinatown tenements doing the heavy lifting. To transcend it will require great effort, physical and emotional, by both men. Det. Mosely's confession to convicted felon Bunker is the worth- watching soul of the film, and with a nice twist the rescued criminal effortlessly becomes the heroic redeemer.

However, as the chase stretches forward it becomes too thin, and breaks the allegiance of the viewer: a stuck bus starts rolling again subsequently making a blind hairpin turn into an ally, a doorway miraculously appears as an escape hatch, and formerly determined evil inexplicably loses it nerve -- and so too the film.