FILM REVIEW: 16 BLOCKS

By Allison Benedikt

Chicago Tribune Staff Writer

2 stars

A friend e-mailed recently with a simple request: Explain the success of "24."

"What's it all about?" he asked earnestly of the hit Fox TV show. "And who cares if it's a day instead of lots of days?"

This friend would not like "16 Blocks," the new, real time-ish Bruce Willis action pic (the movie is 97 minutes, the plot 118) that re-imagines the ingenious never-ending-day device as a never-ending morning. Jack Bauer, meet Jack Mosley.

A professional drunk and bitter soul, NYPD detective Mosley (Willis) is all washed up, biding time until retirement with a bottle of scotch as his trusty partner. Hung over at 8:02 a.m., Mosley is assigned to transport the Chatty Cathy petty convict Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) from jailhouse to courthouse, where he is scheduled to testify in front of a grand jury by 10 a.m. It's a distance of 17 blocks.

Kidding.

What sounds like a simple task - a one-pint job, you might say - turns into a movie plot reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's "The Gauntlet": Bad guys with guns try to shoot Eddie, who is actually scheduled to snitch on some dirty cops, a.k.a. the bad guys with guns, including Jack's former partner, Frank (David Morse).

Spurred to action by the sheer injustice of it all, Jack moves heaven and earth to get Eddie to the courthouse on time, and "16 Blocks" becomes, as only the marketing guys can compose with a straight face, "the story of how two men change - and change each other - during a tense 16-block struggle between life and death."

Filmed primarily in Toronto, director Richard Donner's lower Manhattan has more unlocked doors than taxis, so instead of hailing a cab, Jack and Eddie spend much of the movie ducking into random buildings, evading Frank for a few minutes of dialogue, then running and ducking again.

Def does most of the talking. As written by Richard Wenk, Eddie is a verbal savant, unable to control his own nasal chatter in even the most dangerous scenarios. The incessant chatter is annoying for the viewer, but worse, it's degrading for Def, whose evident talent is all but wasted on a script that manages to combine the wise black sidekick and the shifty ghetto kid into one condescending role.

Willis is more suited to his part. Though he's not exactly Serpico, it's about time the over-50 action hero acts his age, and he wears the mustache and gut convincingly. But he never develops a rapport with Def, and in the end it's not the predictable action but this lack of chemistry and camaraderie that sinks "16 Blocks" - a surprise considering that Donner's directing credits include the four "Lethal Weapon" movies.

Then again, how close can two guys get in a morning? Next time, "16 Blocks: The Sleepover."

"16 Blocks"

Directed by Richard Donner; written by Richard Wenk; photographed by Glen MacPherson; edited by Steven Mirkovich; production designed by Arv Greywal; music by Klaus Badelt; produced by Avi Lerner, Randall Emmett, John Thompson, Arnold Rifkin and Jim Van Wyck. A Warner Bros. Pictures release; opens Friday, March 3. Running time: 1:37. MPAA rating: PG-13 (violence, intense sequences of action, and some strong language).

Jack Mosley - Bruce Willis

Eddie Bunker - Mos Def

Frank Nugent - David Morse