16 Blocks (2006)

Starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, et al
Rated PG-13, 105 minutes

It’s the end of a long day (apparently) for detective Jack Mosley (Willis). His lieutenant asks him to take a witness (Mos Def) sixteen blocks to the courthouse for his testimony, set to take place in 118 minutes (how convenient). Hey, it’s overtime, so what the hell, says Jack. Little did he know...

As one might imagine, this seemingly easy task becomes much harder in the world of Hollywood. Jack stops the car calmly and finds his witness is about to be shot. And that’s only the beginning. It turns out this witness is going to testify against a fellow cop – something the force wants to put a stop to right away. It’s up to Jack to fight his way through sixteen blocks and get him to testify.

I shall not spoil any further, but the triteness of everything aggravates you so much, that the decent twist introduced in the middle of the film is glossed over in your anger. This movie was a lot of mediocre. Bruce is Bruce, there are some chases and tense moments, but it all leaves a taste blander than notebook paper in your mouth. And who told Mos Def to do his Homey the Clown impression to play witness Eddie Bunker?

There were a handful of redeeming comedic moments, though I don’t know how many of those were intentional. And it looks neat, with some “real” camera angles (for lack of a better term), but I hated some of the other things. Some scenes were too trippy and confusing for their own good; a seemingly desperate attempt at making the movie edgy and interesting. You did get the gist of the characters and their motives eventually, but there wasn’t a lot of backstory presented to get you interested early on. Lots of action is good when there’s some direction to it, but they didn’t present it here.

**¼

Luckily I got to see this on the glistening glow of a computer screen with friends to mock it – don’t ask me how (cough cough). So I imagine that score might be lower had I paid some hard earned dollars to catch it.