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Critics Consensus: Despite strong performances from Bruce Willis and Mos Def, 16 Blocks is a shopworn entry in the buddy-action genre.
Critic Consensus: Despite strong performances from Bruce Willis and Mos Def, 16 Blocks is a shopworn entry in the buddy-action genre.
All Critics (162) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (90) | Rotten (72) | DVD (10)
A happier surprise is the smart work of director Richard Donner: 16 Blocks is all jumble and jangle-crowds, snarled traffic, and discordant car horns.
Willis has been playing slight variations on this role for years now, and though the films don't get better, his performances do.
Clunky, solid, enjoyable.
Willis and Def -- funny even if he overdoes the whiny shrieking -- are a terrific team.
I thought this film is one long corny cliché.
Hiding among all the uniforms and bullets, it turns out, is an actors' movie, and two actors more than capable of hitting their marks.
It's a satisfying piece of genre filmmaking and an underrated American crime story...
Told in nearly real-time 16 Blocks stops and starts, putting in buffers for decent character moments between Jack and Eddie. It's necessary to understand why they do what they do, but it makes what they're doing occasionally dull.
16 Blocks is a good watch thanks to the performances of Bruce Willis and Mos Def.
B-movie done with shrewd aplomb
At its heart, this is actually an excellent film. But, as filmmakers seek to escalate the big action, believability suffers severely.
There's a fine line between old-fashioned and cliched.
Broken down, washed up alcoholic police detective Jack Mosley is given the mundane task of escorting a witness 16 blocks from the precinct to the courthouse, and is given about 118 minutes to complete the job. Things don't go as planned, and prove far from easy however, as a legion of crooked cops want the witness dead, and will not stop until that happens. Essentially this is just a contemporary update of the Eastwood film The Gauntlet, and, despite it being rather generic, formulaic, and predictable, I still enjoyed it, had a good time, and found enough stuff to like to give it a recommendation. I'm giving it an extra half star (basically a barely made it B-) because I dug the character interactions, and appreciated that this wasn't entirely an over-the-top action fest. Willis is pretty decent as basically an older, more human, more vulnerable, less wisecrackin' John McClane and he conveys the feelings of regret, depression, and being burnt out very well. As the witness Eddie Bunker (named after real life criminal turned actor Edward Bunker) Mos Def is a mumbling motormouth, and he seriously spends almost all of his screentime talking nonstop, and, despite being rather annoying, he didn't come off as grating like the types of characters Chris Tucker plays, and he is also somewhat likeable. David Morse is less developed and fleshed out in his role as Mosley's former partner/the chief antagonist, but he does okay. The movie is lacking a super strong plot (as far as the specifics and motivations go), but the performances and character interactions are good, the action is fine, and it's never boring. Give it a watch, like as a rainy day boredom sort of thing.
Super Reviewer
A not-bad but not-good thriller somewhat spoiled by they ultra-annoying Mos Def. Who thought it was a good idea for him to spend the entire movie trying to do an Eric Cartman impression?
I think this movie has been overlooked. Nobody talks about it, when they should be, because for whatever purpose this movie has going for it, it makes it's mark with flying colours!
Decent thriller, Mos Def struggles as a mentally challenged witness. I would write more but I don't care and I need to take a dump.
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