It didn’t take me long into the movie to realize that I really liked it. The fact that you knew who the bad guy was about 20 minutes in was cool, and I thought Mos Def did a great job.
The story follows a cop who clearly is not capable of doing his job (he’s a drunk barely hanging on, as played by Bruce Willis). He is given the task of picking up a witness and taking him the 16 blocks to the courthouse where he is due to testify before a jury. He has to be there by 10 a.m., which is about 118 minutes (this is a movie told in real time, so when they say 118 minutes, you know they mean 118 minutes). But on the way there they encounter a group of men who have no intention of letting that witness get to the courthouse.
It was a good movie. Mos Def was doing some crazy accent – very similar to Damon Wayan’s Drunk Man from “In Living Color”. But his character was likable without being too annoying. Bruce Willis looked HORRIBLE – a credit to the makeup department. The script was decent, and the plot moved quickly and with lots of twists and turns. The one thing that got me mad, though, was that it was set in NYC and all they had to do at some point was hop in one of the 100s of yellow taxis that were on the street. The bad guys would NOT have been able to find that taxi. But then the movie would have been a lot shorter, right?
This is a great rental and I definitely recommend it!
3 1/2 birthday cakes out of five.