Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

05-10-06

16 Blocks, a film directed by Richard Donner and starring Bruce Willis and Mos Def, may have disappeared from American screens a little while ago but it opened a couple of weeks ago over here so I thought I’d say something about it. Bruce Willis is one of those strange actors: most of his output has been patchy to say the least but he has proven that he can act in things like Unbreakable and Sin City. He also made the first Die Hard very entertaining brainless fluff. 16 Blocks, which sees Willis in the mold of alcoholic, washed-up, divorced policeman so popular with mystery writers, is an odd couple movie. 16 Blocks is enlivened by a number of things: Firstly the presence of David Morse as Frank Nugent, Willis’s former (and as bent as a six quid note) partner. Morse is superb, the coolest looking policeman to hit the screens in years, helped by his commanding performance that lifts it up above the corn. Secondly, 16 Blocks is the sort of mindless entertaining fluff that Willis is born to star in and so, like Die Hard, suspension of disbelief is relatively easy when you’re taken along on such a diverting rollercoaster ride. And finally, Donner is an old hand at constructing well-crafted nonsense so the direction here holds your attention pretty much from start to finish. Mos Def, who plays the criminal that Willis is guarding, affects a slightly cartoonish voice but there is real chemistry between the pair and you are carried along by this. Alright, the plot, if you look too closely, is a load of hackneyed cobblers but for the reasons I mentioned above, 16 Blocks is the sort of Spring blockbuster that gives you a smile on your face as you leave the cinema. Come back next time for my report on the Comic Expo show at Bristol and the entry after that will be my look at Dark Horse’s brilliant Tarzan Archives.