Mos Def is one of the featured performers in two movies opening this week — this one and the concert film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, which I haven't yet seen. I have seen 16 Blocks, however, so I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, given a choice between Mr. Def's two concurrent projects, this might not be the block party you really want to attend this week.
Top billing here actually goes to Bruce Willis, playing a cynical NYPD vet with a bum leg, a drinking problem and a hairline that's receded back beyond the outer rings of Saturn. Enter Def's character, Eddie, a somewhat simple-minded guy whose disposition is every bit as sunny as Willis' is terminally sour. Naturally, the two wind up on the run together, learning valuable life lessons from one another as they try to avoid legions of dirty cops trying to keep Eddie from testifying against one of their ranks.
Willis isn't acting so much as retreading a slightly older, gloomier version of his stock type, and his performance is mainly defined by an ability to appear paunchy and shriveled simultaneously. Def affects a nasal, nerdy persona (a bit like one of Chappelle's characters) that makes us occasionally feel like we're watching Forrest Gump stuck in a Bruce Willis shoot-'em-up. Both actors remain curiously watchable, though — that's the eternal mystery of star power for you, folks — and even when the movie tests our patience with leaps in logic and lack of originality, 16 Blocks works fairly well as a tautly crafted feature-length chase, with just enough human drama to ground things in the end. The director here is Lethal Weapon's Richard Donner, last seen stinking up the screen in Timeline, who shows that he still at least remembers how to go through the motions of making an action movie.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.