Stop me if you've heard this one: Bruce Willis is a burned-out cop on the edge. He's an alcoholic, he's alienated the only woman in his life and his colleagues disapprove of him. Even his friends think he's an asshole. But today, with integrity, courage and a lot of gunfire, he's going to prove he's the only man left who's got what it takes.
Okay, you've heard it before because it's the synopsis of almost every credit in Willis' filmography. You've either seen it in The Last Boy Scout or Die Hard with a Vengeance. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Because this is his signature role, Willis plays it with a steady assurance and watchability.
To one-up himself, Willis takes raggedness to a whole new level with Jack Mosely. With his slow stagger and ghostly pale complexion, this guy looks like he's a week late for his dialysis. He's the kind of cop who'll drink a dead man's liquor while baby-sitting a crime scene. But today, he has to pick up a prisoner at lockup and escort him to the courthouse—a scenario that, as a fellow cop describes, puts him in "the wrong place at the wrong time," which, by the way, is two thirds of the Die Hard trilogy's tagline.
The prisoner is Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), a two-bit loser with a sunny outlook, and a voice and mannerisms that tow the line between genuinely funny and unforgivably annoying. Eddie's on his way to court to tell on a dirty cop, which means a whole gang of dirty cops intend to make it very difficult for the odd couple of Jack and Eddie to make the titular distance.
The film borrows many elements from The Gauntlet and even Quick Change, and there'll seldom be a plot twist you don't see coming a block away. But after four Lethal Weapon films, director Richard Donner knows his way around an unlikely action sequence. Between his know-how and Willis' bag of tricks, 16 Blocks winds up being more entertaining than it has any right to be. In an overused genre, Willis is still the only man left who's got what it takes.