16 Blocks

Good old-school movie. Donner seems to have returned to the '90s and Willis seems to be playing one of his former characters, like Joe Hallenbeck in The Last Boy Scout, only ten years later. Just an old and tired version :-). The story is 100% old-school, but it warms you up pleasantly. It's like the good old days are back for a while. Maybe that's why I’m giving it a rating of 4 stars instead of 3. (10/31/2006)

Such a shame. In the first two acts, this drama had the makings of a nice 4*, but from the bus scene onwards, the story is one logical gaffe after another, with the most profane screenwriting cliché (I was 100% sure the screenwriter was going to unload on me) at the very end. Even so, Bruce Willis repaired his reputation after the bad Hostage. The role of an aging, limping cop suited him like a glove. The sword-wielding Mos Def took time to get used to (and played it well), and Richard Donner is still not an old hand. Summary: easily digestible three-star entertainment. (09/26/2006)

Quite near the beginning there is a perfectly directed scene that whets your appetite and... and then nothing. 16 Blocks is a solid, old-school crime movie, but don’t expect anything more of it than a variation on what we have already seen a hundred times before. You would be needlessly disappointed, which would be a shame because this picture certainly has slightly above-average qualities. (07/16/2007)

In retrospect, this is not just Donner's directorial epilogue (that he'll actually be behind the camera for the next Lethal Weapon is perhaps beyond anyone's belief), but a kind of epilogue to the cop genre. It's as if the film is an unspoken farewell to the world of police families, hectic offices, crowded streets, and their protagonists – scruffy detectives having a whiskey breakfast in a smoky bar, strapped with guns from their necks to their socks. Of course, this is also due to setting the film in the early hours of the morning, when work is just getting underway and the bars are still closed, but already in the opening scenes at the police station there is a kind of end to the old days of police stations. It lacks the characteristic bustle, there are few people there, and there are cardboard boxes everywhere, like before moving. The ensuing plot is ultimately about how one hard-nosed man dismantles the established police internal organization of crooked, slicked-back cops that has been going on for decades and is well known to us from old cop movies. What's more, it's about the life of a young black man who must be dragged through the hectic, dirty, and rugged streets of erratic New York City in order to eventually set up a fancy bakery. The end of the old order in the name of laugh-out-loud gentrification. If that was the creative intent from the start and not just a happy prognosis, then hats off to him. (09/14/2010)

Richard Donner’s final directorial effort, which this time veers into suspenseful thriller territory (though I still have him pegged to Superman, I can’t help it). Over the past decade, it’s been one of the most successful films that also features Bruce Willis. The idea is certainly unconventional; finally, someone tackled those perplexing blocks in New York (I really can’t understand how its residents navigate them). The Willis-Morse duo works excellently, their chemistry as characters is spot-on, and the casting of the hero and villain was well done. I’m a bit puzzled by the budget, which seems excessive. Yes, there are shootouts and a traffic accident, but at times it feels like the film could have done with a smaller budget. Otherwise, I enjoyed the catchy soundtrack, which fit the scenes well. The ending is traditionally moralistic, with good triumphing over evil. Sinking so many police officers and still living comfortably? It seems a bit fairy-tale-like, and I’d have changed the ending. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that it deserves a solid four stars in the end. Rating: 71%. (06/13/2018)