Review of 16 Blocks (2006) by Markb. — 03 Apr 2006

Bruce Willis looks like hell in this movie. He's virtually unrecognizable in the early scenes--balding, sweaty, sallow and giving every impression in the world that he's going to pull a Janet Leigh on us and croak early on.

Thank God for that. Unlike Harrison Ford, who's still at his advanced age trying to convince us that he can fight and screw as efficaciously as he did when he first put on his Indiana Jones hat, Willis isn't afraid to sacrifice looks for characterization, and as he's done in everything from his signature role in Die Hard to last year's underrated thriller Hostage, is completely willing to show weakness, vulnerability, even fear.

(No wonder directors as fundamentally different as John McTiernan and M. Night Shyamalan love him!) Willis plays Jack Mosley, a burned-out, alcoholic desk-jockey cop improbably ordered to escort loopy, addled criminal Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) sixteen blocks to court so that Bunker can testify in a crucial case; along the way both are perpetually boobytrapped by individuals whose lives would be far easier if Bunker DIDN'T make it to the courthouse.

16 Blocks follows the predictable Odd-Couple-dodging-bullets path already well-trod by 48 HRS., Midnight Run, director Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon, and (insert YOUR favorite example here), but the performances, a few genuine twists, and a surprising amount of real warmth make this solid meat-and-potatoes entertainment.

(And never mind that it tries and fails to be a "real-time" movie like High Noon or Nick of Time. A viewing or two of TV's 24, which cheats like crazy, makes this film's logistical improbabilities seem like small potatoes indeed.

) Def pulls off the harder-than-it-looks task of making his potentially irritating character truly endearing; it's part of the reason why, during the last minute of this movie, my audience actually and unironically cooed at the screen! And Donner does a couple of nifty pieces of action sleight-of-hand where you're led to expect Result A to transpire, but Result B happens instead with such suddenness you drop your popcorn.

That's not all Donner deserves credit for: between the self-satisfied, inside-jokey Maverick, the bloated Sergio Leone-wannabe Assassins, the moribund Timeline (which proved that it really IS possible to turn a Michael Crichton novel into a snoozefest) and the increasingly lazy Lethal Weapon sequels, this is his best movie by far in over 20 years.

(Only Find Me Guilty's Sidney Lumet prevents 76-year-old Donner from being the oldest-timer to currently have a commercial movie playing in theaters.) For some reason, great foreign directors like Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman, Bunuel, Ozu and many others do some of their greatest work in their old age, while most of the all-time best American directors tend to stumble very, very badly.