Property Search
Cars Online
Insurance For Women
Free Insurance Quote
Life Insurance
Online Dating
Flights Online
Play the UK Lottery
Compare quotes. Insure.
Place your Bet!
Flight Centre Specials
Car Rental Online
Out of time
Nils van der Linden
Posted Thu, 29 Jun 2006
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Bruce Willis plays a tired cop who just wants to relax after a long day. But even before the shoes come off and the glass of Jack is poured, his life is thrown into disarray; the kind that can only be solved by more running, jumping, punching and shooting.
Nothing new there, you might think. Add the director of the 'Lethal Weapon' movies and you're dead certain — '16 Blocks' must be yet another 'Die Hard With A Slight Twist'.
But you'd be wrong.
More character-driven drama with occasional bursts of action than an all-out bang!bang!bang! extravaganza without a plot, Richard Donner’s film is a gritty, intelligent 1970s style thriller.
Willis may play a cop (again) but this time Jack Mosley is an alcoholic washout who treats every day at work with as much enthusiasm as a trip to the dentist. It’s a transformation almost as impressive as Sylvester Stallone’s metamorphosis into a punch-drunk sheriff in 'Copland'. Bloated, sweaty, with eyes dead to the world, Mosley’s an embarrassment; hardly your stereotypical action hero as he limps around, killing time between trips to the bottom of the bottle. And frankly, he’d much rather be at home getting tanked than doing the menial tasks he’s lumped with — like escorting petty criminal Eddie Bunker to court.
But, as this is a Bruce Willis movie and not a painful BBC documentary on the mundane life of a real policeman, that 16 block journey from jail to courthouse isn’t as easy as it initially sounds. Bunker is on his way to finger a dirty cop, who, unsurprisingly, doesn’t want the prisoner to talk — forcing the reluctant Mosley to turn on his corrupt colleagues.
The resulting game of cat and mouse (or cops and robbers) plays out in real time, a la ‘24’, but Donner fails to make the most of the ticking clock. Instead of cranking up the tension that comes with a built-in time limit, the veteran director focuses on the relationship between Mosley and his unlikely cohort. Superbly — and relentlessly — played by Mos Def, the irrepressible Bunker gradually reveals that he’s more than an annoying motormouth, and in the process reminds the deadbeat cop there’s still reason to live.
It’s not as clichéd as all that, but neither is the interaction between the characters (the man-who-had-everything-but-threw-it-all-away and the man-who-had-nothing-but-never-quit) as inspired as Donner and screenwriter Richard Wenk seem to think. So while Def turns on the comedic charm and Duracell Bunny enthusiasm opposite Willis’ injured dog routine, the central theme (people can change) isn’t quite substantial enough to keep you from wishing for a bit more action, and some sense of urgency.
Like Mosley, ’16 Blocks’ is a little bloated. And it limps.
