16 Blocks: Worth the Watch or Pass it?

Film: 16 Blocks. Year: 2006 Genre: Action/ Drama. Director: Richard Donner

When you hear the name Bruce Willis what type of movies you consider at the first place?

Probably, it’s gonna be The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense, Die Hard and others.

But what if, I’ll tell you one more movie, which is not so popular or well-known, but definitely worth you attention ?

This actor has played more than 120 characters during his career. That’s why, I’m pretty sure, there’re some hidden gems that will surprise you, including this certain picture.

Synopsis

What can we tell about the plot of this movie?

Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosley, a exhausted drunk, in 16 Blocks. He’s a detective/cop who doesn’t have the energy to do his thing. As the film opens, he’s surrounded by dead bodies and spilled drugs and is told by an officer, “Sit on this until the uniforms get here.” Jack rummages around in the apartment until he finds what he wants: A bottle (what else it might be?). He poured himself a drink and sat down to wait for the uniforms. He then returned to the center, where the receptionist gave him a mint.

Jack’s shift is over. The last thing he needs is to do some other dutes. But his boss assigns him to escort a witness 16 blocks to a grand jury hearing. The witness has to arrive in two hours, before the grand jury’s term expires. The main character goes to get the guy, who is named Eddie Bunker and is played by Mos Def as a motormouth/big mouth who talks all the time, and without exaggerations all the time, in a litany of complaints about his treatment, his life and his fate.

It seems easy. Get someone in the car and drive 16 blocks. Right? Jack can’t complete 16 squares. He makes a pit stop at a liquor store. After he left, he saw the suspect wronging the witness in the vehicle and shot the man, which was a good decision by nature. He saw someone trying to kill the witness and took him to a friend’s bar and called his boss.

Not a good move. Frank Nugent (David Morse), his boss/chief, is the linchpin of a ring of corruption and drug dealing within the department. He is one of the people who wants to prevent Eddie Bunker from telling the truth about what this guy had seen. Jack knows this. He’s wise to the crooked cops because let’s face it. he’s like them. But there’s something about Eddie Bunker, something about his innocence behavior, something about his naive rely and trust in Jack, something about the way he keeps on talking all the time, that somehow gets to Jack. Just when Eddie is around to be murdered in the bar, Jack shoots a cop and saves Eddie’s life. Now they are both on the same side of the law.

The questions are:

Why do some people want to kill the witness?

Will the main character help the witness out and stand for him?

Will he be able to reach the final point and address the problem?

Pros and Cons

From my side, I have no doubts of saying, this movie is worth to watch and spend 1h45m of your time on it.

Why?

Firstly, I did like the performance delivering by the whole crew. The side actors, the main ones, the supportive ones. All of them did their job and provided the proper emotions, behavior and motive based on the character’s story.

Secondly, the dynamic of the movie picture. You can’t be bored through the story, because the director won’t let you !

There’re everything in it what action movie lovers appreciate: from car races to shooting scenes.

Do you need more? What about the friendship between the cop and the crime persona? You can find this element here as well. I personally liked the final pitch that was implemented in the script. It was pretty obvious for me, but needed for character developments.

The movie has been made by Richard dooner, a master in combining action, chase scenes and humor (see “Lethal Weapon,” etc). Here he starts with three good performances: Bruce is a world seeker but a bit of a rebel; Mos Def, whose speaking role is more or less the same as the movie’s duration; and David Morse, evil person without the moral.

I can’t say, that I’m a huge fan of action movies, but this particular one is a banger!

If we’re talking about cons of this film, I guess it might be the absence of women actresses’. Of course, there’re some actresses playing here, but they didn’t get the huge impact on the storyline. In this case, you, as the viewer understands that actresses can provide more value to the plot.