48 Blocks, or 3 Ways to Think About 16 Blocks

I have to admit that I avoided 16 Blocks for a long time for reasons similar to why I didn’t feel compelled to see that remake of Assault on Precinct 137 D, or whatever—I was pretty sure that this was just going to be a terrible redo of The Gauntlet, and it’s not like I was a fan of The Gauntlet. (For one thing, I had only seen it a couple of times when I was a kid and for some reason I thought it was actually part of the whole Dirty Harry cycle, and not even the best of those. Still, the long bus ride under fire was somewhat iconic, if not exactly one of my favorites.) So, it took a serious recommendation and some prodding before I took the time out to see this pleasantly surprising film.

The Aesthetics of 16 Blocks
I felt a moment of trepidation when I noticed that this movie was produced by NU Image, the same folks who brought us the Shark Attack series and that nearly unwatchable classic of the sci-fi shark ‘n’ submarine genre—Raging Sharks. But apparently they are also capable of making good films and this is the proof.
Bruce Willis turns in a worthy performance as the down and out alcoholic cop Jack Mosley. He looks so tired in the opening scenes that it makes me feel exhausted just watching him struggling to make it to the next donut and bottle of booze and then in a moment he wakes up and suddenly becomes something else. What is most enjoyable about the ensuing heroism is that he doesn’t miraculously turn into a gunfighting ballerina—he’s still an old man with a drinking problem who’s in no shape to be jogging around Manhattan. It’s not the physical feats that make Jack Mosley a hero—it’s the moral choice, the moral growth of his character from a schlub with dubious ethics to a stand-up guy. It’s to Willis’s credit that he can handle all of this and throw in just enough of his sense of humor to give us a character who we actually like.
And then there’s Mos Def as Eddie Bunker, the jailbird witness who just won’t stop yapping. It takes a little while to really get to like his character but something about Mos Def makes me want to believe him from the beginning. He’s an obsessive chatterbird, but his obsession with cake recipes is charming and as yappy characters go he’s profound without being overwritten. And like Willis’s character he’s got his flaws, though his ultimate moral redemption is in what he does after the main action of the film is over. (Like the real life Edward Bunker, he does make good with his second chance.)
Bruce and Mos both deserve a really big cake for their acting here.
The gang of corrupt cops is solid—they generally look like people you might otherwise mistake for protagonists in a different story. (Except for the guy playing Det. Shue (Robert Racki) who looks like a weasel-eyed dirty cop, and of course the semi-dirty Deputy Commissioner—are there any good police commissioners in films?) And then there’s David Morse, who I’ve liked since St. Elsewhere and who still manages to fool me into thinking he might be a good guy in films like this. So, maybe a smaller cake for Mr. Morse.
Honorable Mention Cupcake Award goes to Kim Chan for speaking the words Yu-Gi-Oh! and thus making me cringe and laugh at the same time. Another honorable mention goes to Jenna Stern who plays Bruce Willis’s sister, Diane (she got the prettier genes) and who deserves more screen time. In fact, Diane’s timely appearance is just about the only thing that keeps from the gender imbalance of the film from being too noticeable. (The ADA doesn’t really count.)
The cinematography is solid with some exceptionally good visual moments. (Granted, the NYC landscape at close quarters doesn’t afford any opportunity for the grandness of a David Lean film.) The Richards (screenwriter Wenk and director Donner) each deserves a tray of cupcakes for their work here. They obviously benefited from having a dynamic improvisatory duo like Mos Def and Bruce Willis, but the mere fact that they knew what they had shows superior judgment and skill on their part. And the more or less real-time chase of the film is gripping and more or less realistic without being dull and exciting without being too unbelievable.
Also, their commentary on the deleted scenes is simply hilarious. I think the next time they announce a Will Ferrell movie he should be kidnapped and replaced with Richard Wenk. As for Richard Donner, this film can certainly stand up there with The Goonies, Superman and Lethal Weapon.

The 17th Block: A Tale of Two Endings
The greatest feature on the 16 Blocks DVD is that you can play the whole film with either the theatrical ending or the “alternate” ending. Frankly, every DVD with such endings or deleted scenes should give you an ala carte buffet option of watching a film with whatever combination of scenes you want. Of course, even if that wasn’t a technological nightmare it’s enough to give every film director, editor, and all the assorted corporations, guilds, associations and covens fits and nightmares just thinking about it.
Now, the cover calls the alternate ending “shocking” whatever that means, but it’s not really shocking. All it really does is highlight the point that each ending represents a fundamentally different philosophy. The ending you like most is likely to reflect your belief system. The film’s overall theme is that people can change and (with a little push from fate) do something right with their life. The theatrical ending rewards the belief that people can change by having both Eddie Bunker and Jack Mosley survive to continue the changes in their lives that they begin here.
The alternate ending, on the other hand, is predicated on the notion of sacrifice: that the act of doing the right thing is its own reward and that the hero must sacrifice his life to make good—possibly in expiation of his sins. Is this a necessary sacrifice? (And come to think of it, the jail term that Jack Mosley serves in the theatrical cut is a sacrifice too.) It’s not necessarily a darker ending, but it is a bit of a downer watching someone open up a box with a dead man’s cake in it. The alternate ending makes the story more of a redemptive tragedy, but I think I prefer the theatrical ending since it gives everyone a second chance to prove that people can change. The best part of the alternate ending is the line “They say that when a man faces his destiny, destiny ends and he becomes the man he really is.” It’s one of the best lines in the movie, and it’s a shame it’s not in the theatrical cut.

16 More Blocks
16 Blocks can also be a corrective to a problem that continually faces society: the immunization of brotherhood. There is a tendency these days (reinforced through art, film, literature, public opinion and fawning historians) to not just celebrate hero culture, but to afford the actions of any “band of brothers” immunity to any rules of civilization. The gist of this is: “They do what they have to do get the job (whatever that is) done and unless you’re there and sharing their burdens you can’t judge them and (and this is the really dangerous part) no one can really judge them.” The idea has been promulgated that soldiers don’t fight for a cause or a policy, they fight for survival and the safety of their comrades. Even insofar as this may be true on a day to day basis, lionizing mere survival is no way to run a culture. And while it is borderline treasonous to suggest the notion that soldiers are doing a bad thing if they kill innocent people in order to “do the job” the culture (mostly) does not extend that bit of patriotic immunity to the police. In fact, there is a long and glorious history of corrupt cops in cinema—cops who are just plain evil, cops who cross the lines, cops who suggest that any criticism of their actions is invalid because they cannot be judged by anyone for what they have to do. Most of the time the arguments of the cops sound eerily similar to the military arguments; in many cases the cops make a reasonable case for the idea that they, too, are fighting a war—a never-ending dirty war. Detective Frank Nugent (David Morse) even uses the phrase “collateral damage” to describe the innocent people who had to be killed in order to prevent them from ruining cases and otherwise getting in the way. Eddie Bunker has to be eliminated because he might send one of the “good guys” to jail and what good would that do? The disturbing thing for humanity is that all you would have to do to eliminate the moral quandary of this film is to change Mos Def’s Eddie Bunker to Ali Baba and change the uniforms from NYPD blue to desert camo and there would be no problem. No crisis of conscience at all. Which begs another question: if we (as a people) have decided that protecting the lives of soldiers is worth the deaths of any innocent civilians (well, foreign civilians) then why haven’t we extended that belief to the police? And why aren’t we torturing repeat sex offenders? Why aren’t we waterboarding cop killers and rapists? Why isn’t Detective Nugent right? Or is it that’s he’s right about our attitudes, and just mistaken about the geography where we hold that to be true?
The good news is, there’s a place where we still have a conscience and we can still imagine that doing something right for once is what makes a real hero—that it’s not just “us” and “them” but “right” and “wrong” that define the “good guys” and the “bad guys” whether it’s in a film or in real life. That idea, the idea that we are defined by what we do and not merely by who we are or who we have been—is worth baking a cake for and celebrating.