The reviews of 16 Blocks are almost a text book example of damning with faint praise. A better than average buddy movie, a notch above th usual buddy movie fare – phrases like that don’t make you storm the cinema. And you know what, they’re right .As a genre exercise 16 Blocks is more than acceptable. It goes interesting places, rounds out its characters slightly beyond its genre cliches, but it isn’t the best things since sliced bread and it knows it.
This kind of lacklustre whiff over the project is illustrated I think by the lead character names. Willis plays Moseley, Mos Def play Eddie Bunker. Both names of crime authors. It might be an homage, but its a clunky homage to his favourite authors. I would not have been surprised if the bad guy was called Leonard or Chandler. But certainly a return to form for Richard Donner after Timeline.