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When I think of director Richard Donner, my mind tends to titles like Superman and the Lethal Weapon - the high points in art director. Recently, however, Donner production has been less impressive, and includes over bloated Assassins and awfulness by chronology. Unfortunately, the film 16 Blocks not recall glory days. This is a cobbled together disorder in the clich s and that will not be able to surprise in any of its turns. Despite occasional bursts of suspense, the film plays as a whole, how long 95 minutes, with its lack of imagination leads us more often than in the tediousness of tension.

16 blocks is the high concept of the film: a broken-down cop (Bruce Willis) is accused of taking criminal / witness (Mos Def) 16 block journey to New York City, one of the police lockup pending trial. On the way, they have become victims of dirty cops (led by David Morse), which seek to silence a witness. Plus, there is a time element. If the evidence does not happen at 10:00 am, Grand Jury will be disbanded and the police will be free. Once could see that this assumption may lead to a white-knuckle thriller. Or is at the heart of recovery. 16 Blocks ever closer to the latter.

Take Bruce Willis, for example. Jack Mosley is overweight, aging, alcoholic detective with a checkered past. He seems to be on the verge of a heart attack. This guy is in the oldest stereotypes in the book cop movie. Willis is a competent performance, but it is trivial in nature. Mos Def plays Eddie Bunker, as a typical motormouth. This is another general in nature - the criminal heart. All he really wants to do is to move to Seattle and start a bakery cake. Of course, within 90 minutes (or thereabouts), they are together, they become life plague. This is the way it is with movies like this. In Lethal Weapon series, Donner has been able to fashion a sound friendship between the two opposing parties. In trying something similar in the 16 blocks, he took too many shortcuts.

The most interesting character in the film is David Morse in Frank Nugent, perhaps because Morse put more energy into his image than Willis and Def combined. The bad guys are always more fun, but this is the case when you almost find yourself rooting for them. Of course, the film does its best to turn them into caricatures, except their clothes in black. At every opportunity, we are given another chance to see that they are not NICE Men. Shades of gray does not mean in simplified movies like this.

I could comment about 16 blocks “attack on a spectator in credulity, but it has bigger problems. There is no chemistry between Jack and Eddie (not surprising, since the characters just met). Closure requirements stupidity and loud mouth Frank, and includes One of the most tired tricks in the “open mouth, insert legs” books. If you do not see this coming, you should be ashamed of yourself. This seems obvious and telegraphed, like most other plot points in this film.

To be fair, Donner managed to sneak in some scenes, which build some anticipation. There, in the original maps in a bar, which, in more complex films can make us believe it can go in any case. Bus / hostage-taking also works, though I remember it as a much more interesting things were in speed. I think that the difference between the vehicle careening around city streets at 55 mph and another one standing.

It takes about 90 minutes to make this particular block of 16 trips. For a few days in New York, which pairs for the course. Next time, take the subway.

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