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Running the Gauntlet
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16 Blocks
Richard Donner, USA, 2006
Rating: 4.0
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Posted:
March 15,
2006
By
Kevin Forest Moreau
Movie stars of a certain stature are often prisoners of their own
larger-than-life personas. Certainly, Bruce Willis is one of them: It's been
a long time -- since the spectacularly indulgent vanity project Hudson
Hawk, at least -- since audiences could buy the actor as an everyman and
not as Bruce Willis, mega-star. But every now and then, Willis likes
to step out of his gruff, wisecracking autopilot mode and remind us that he
can actually, you know, act.
While it never rises above a standard-issue action flick, 16 Blocks
nevertheless offers one of those reminders. As beaten-down cop Jack Mosley,
Willis limps right into his character's quiet resignation to a life of
bottom-rung assignments -- babysitting a corpse until the crime-scene
investigators arrive, or ferrying a witness to the courthouse -- that
require little more than a warm body. Even before we see him drinking on the
job -- surefire cinema shorthand for "loser running from his past" -- we
register his sad sack's unspoken acknowledgment of his co-workers'
awkwardness around him, as if he were a disabled gofer whose disability
everyone acknowledges but never directly addresses.
Soon enough, Mosley's slow, slouching plod toward retirement is thrown a
curveball when he's saddled with escorting small-time con Eddie Bunker (Mos
Def, in subtle showing-off mode) to the aforementioned courthouse (sixteen
blocks away) to testify before a grand jury. And sure enough, it's a set-up:
As soon as Mosley makes a brief, unscheduled stop at a liquor store, an
attempt is made on Bunker's life, and before long Mosley is face-to-face
with his old partner Frank Nugent (David Morse), who quietly implores Mosley
to look the other way so some corrupt cops can eradicate him before his
testimony implicates them. Morse invests his part with a nice sense of
subtle menace, gently talking down to his onetime companion as if he were
steering an Alzheimer's patient toward nap time at the senior center.
It's not Nugent's condescension that spurs Mosley to action, but into action
he does spring, risking his life on a sixteen-block obstacle course for a
petty criminal he doesn't even know. It's a nagging flaw that we have to
take Mosley's newly revived sense of right and wrong on faith (although if
his former partner is crooked, we can surmise that there's been some bad
behavior in his own past). But veteran director Richard Donner keeps things
running at a brisk enough trot that we don't spend too long worrying about
it.
Shot by cinematographer Glen MacPherson in a slightly claustrophobic wash of
New York haze, this agreeable riff on Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet
-- complete with a sequence involving a city bus -- hits its marks with all
the precision you'd expect (or demand) of the veteran behind the Lethal
Weapon films. And the script (credited to Richard Wenk) packs its fair
share of familiar character beats (most of them for Mos Def's Bunker, who
wants to open a bakery and continually impresses upon Mosley that people can
change, etc.). But this serviceable thriller is most memorable for its
all-too-rare glimpse beyond the shopworn façade of Bruce Willis. It's
not Oscar material -- it's not even Nobody's Fool or The Sixth
Sense -- but it's a pleasant little revelation nonetheless.
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