Cast: Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Cylk Coazrt. Dir: Richard Donner. Plot: An ageing cop has to get a witness to court 16 blocks away, but others want to stop him testifying. Confession time. When I heard this was a Bruce Willis action film directed by the man who made the Leathal Weapon movies I was so-so about the whole deal. In fact I’d rather have eaten my hat than sit through this. But duty called-and while I went to sneer, I ended up staying to cheer. And laugh and even sniffle a bit.
This is an action cracker with brilliant leading performances and sharp dialogue. Director Richard Donner coaxes a ten out of ten from Bruce Willis as an over-the-hill cop who wants to drink himself under the table. He looks as rough as a bear’s bum and is less than pleased when he’s assigned to deliver a smarta*se protected witness to testify in a cop corruption case-he doesn’t even wait around for the whining kid’s courtroom suit to be delivered. Something, however, stops Jack looking the other way when his former partner Frank Nugent (David Morse) turns up out of the blue to silence Eddie for good. Mos Def plays witness Eddie Bunker and is funny. He and Bruce Willis have the kind of chemistry shared by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lathal Weapon films, and Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs. The plot is predictable though. Of course motormouth petty crook Bunker brings trouble to Willis’s Jack Mosley.
Of course they bond. Of course the cop does the right thing (even though he’s borderline crooked himself) by battling through the 16 blocks to get his charge to court. But it’s also brilliantly written by Richard Wenk who has crossed Assault On Precinct 13 with Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet but set it on foot. Because our dynamic duo have to walk to court so Mos can spill his guts and start a new life as a baker. Yep, a baker.
Oh, and the shoot ’em up sequences are real virtuoso performances that reveal how Willis can still do it Die Hard-style when he has to. Fast-paced, tense and intermittently exciting, it should keep genre fans engaged with it’s polished blend of tried-and-tested element. But director Richard Donner can’t make Mos def’s whiny simpleton likeable. His endless gabble makes it too easy to sympathise with Willis’s weary hero.