Although the script of “16 Blocks” can be broken down as merely a set of action pieces in which Jack and Eddie flee Frank, get cornered and flee again, Richard Wenk’s screenplay is fundamentally about something else: A seemingly hollowed-out man, eaten away inside by his own moral rot, is allowed to become a reluctant hero who can set things right.įrequently, reminders surface of such finely crafted Gotham thrillers as “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” especially in Wenk’s balancing of the realities of city life with plentiful humorous inserts and Donner’s commitment to driving the film constantly forward but within the bounds of logic. His conscience clicking into gear, Jack shoots some of his own to free Eddie, setting off the chase’s checkered flag. Rather than help get Eddie to the court though, Frank intends to have Eddie - a witness to bloody acts by some of New York’s finest - executed to stop him from testifying against him and several other colleagues. Eluding more gunfire, Jack takes Eddie to his favorite Mulberry Street bar and calls for backup, only to find his 20-year-long partner Frank Nugent (David Morse) arrive with some fellow detectives. Pic swivels on its axis at this point, as Jack leaves the store and shoots a suspicious man trying to make Eddie roll down the back seat window of the car. It’s not long before Jack is up to here with Eddie’s non-stop chatter and with the street traffic, so he pulls over to buy some booze in a liquor store. With roughly 90 minutes’ lead time, Jack starts driving Eddie the 16 blocks between the police station and the court. Opening scene of Jack waiting at the crime scene for detectives has nothing to do with the central story, and everything to do with setting the mood of Jack’s bedraggled existence.īack at the office, though, Jack is asked to transport Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), in jail for a petty crime but ready to testify in a trial, to the downtown courtroom by 10 a.m. Lumbering up a flight of stairs, slumping into a sofa or considering another swig of hooch, Willis’ Jack is palpably a man who’s tired of life, let alone his beat on the New York force. Almost as a dare to auds fed on non-stop movement and thrills, Donner (with key ace collaboration from editor Steven Mirkovich) intros tale in a slow, steady rhythm, cued to the pace of fatigued cop Jack Mosley (Willis). Not that it ever rises to the level of Sidney Lumet’s Gotham police pics (“ Serpico,” “Prince of the City”), but “16 Blocks” does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama, spurred by action but made substantial by characters at crossroads.
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