#also love how none of the reviews mention paul in the slightest

[paul-simon-juggling]

The Paul Simon Special and it's increasingly cursed box art and their insistence on using images from anything except The Paul Simon Special.

[ryanmeft]

Movie Review: 21 Bridges

As the 90’s gave way to the Aughts and popcorn films increasingly became the domain of superheroes and large scale fantasy, long-put-upon nerds gained a lot, but we lost something in the process, as we saw fewer and fewer of the grittier action thrillers that had dominated the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s multiplex. 21 Bridges, helmed by television director Brian Kirk, aims squarely for that feeling, evoking the sensibilities that gave us classics from The French Connection to The Fugitive: a taciturn protagonist with pain in his past and minimal mercy tracks criminals through metaphorically and literally dark streets as a conspiracy builds in the background. If you’re looking for a shake-up in the cop thriller formula, you won’t get it here. If you just want a very good genre exercise, you will.

The plot itself doesn’t go much deeper than the trailers tell you: a detective whose father died in the line and who is known for being relentless is put on a case of multiple officers gunned down in response to a robbery, and locks down all of Manhattan’s bridges to catch them. Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) is very good at his job, but also has a happy trigger finger, and knows how good he is. It is clear other cops don’t like him, though it isn’t always clear why, other than genre demands---Captain McKenna (J.K. Simmons), who oversaw the murdered officers, is initially antagonistic, and two F.B.I. agents (Obi Abili and Andy Truschinski) fill brief standard roles by supplying the obligatory jurisdictional pissing match. Andre is assigned a NARC agent with the wonderful name of Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller), who is notably intent on seeing the suspects gunned down.

There is, of course, more going on here, but the interesting thing is the film barely tries to hide it. In case you’ve never seen a movie before, I’ll slap a spoiler warning here: I’m about to reveal the twists. Things are suspicious early on, during the initial robbery, when Michael Trujillo (Stephan James) and Ray Jackson (Taylor Kitsch) hit a high-class liquor store to steal something besides liquor: 30 kilos of cocaine. 30 turns out to be 300, which is both a really, really good party and a much bigger deal than they bargained for. They take what they can, but on their way out the cops show up, and they shoot their way free, mowing down seven officers in a startling bloodbath that temporarily disables our rational brains. Whatever we find out later, we’re still watching scared people knowing they have minutes to live. But when Andre arrives on the scene, he quickly asks the question some audience members may have: how did the cops get there so quickly? And if they were there for the job, why did they bother to knock?

You can guess the answer. The film has twists, but they aren’t implausible ones. The movie was written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, who has mostly worked on forgettable action flicks but also did the incredibly tense Deepwater Horizon, and Adam Mervis, whose experience has been two shorts and one feature, none of which I’ve seen. Whereas movies are often tempted to twist things more and more ridiculously to keep modern audiences shocked, Carnaham and Mervis are mostly satisfied with the basics: drugs, money and double dealings. Boseman’s Andre is a character who plays to the Black Panther star’s strengths by not requiring too much drama of him or those around him. He’s a simple guy: you find the criminals, especially cop killers, and you take them down. You can feel the impact of it when he allows doubt to settle in, because he is not a man who doubts. Boseman has yet to land a role equal to his biographical turns as Jackie Robinson and James Brown, and this isn’t it, but he fits well enough that his greatest role can wait for another day.

Perhaps the greatest trick the filmmakers accomplish comes in the characters of Michael and Ray. There is never the slightest bit of sympathy for what they’ve done, though the film isn’t above giving us a just-slightly-too-long look at their shirtless pecs for some guttural appeal. No, as alluring as the two actors can be, Ray is a bad man through and through, one who has been so scarred he cares little for the damage he does, while Michael, who does comparatively little of the killing, is still not sorry enough to give up the money or turn himself in. We know they deserve death. Yet as another character points out, these two weren’t born bad men, and since we realize early on that at least some of the cops after them are less than ethically pure, we find ourselves rooting for them to escape in spite of our better instincts. The middle portion of the movie---which at 110 minutes is very short---is occupied with the chase, which owes much to the sensibilities of Michael Mann and his love of moving back and forth through tight spaces and open ones. If it gets a little implausible at times (Michael outruns a hail of gunfire from a helicopter despite having zero cover for several seconds), that’s hardly unusual for the 90’s films that inspired it. I was entirely unsurprised when I looked up cinematographer Paul Cameron and found out he worked on Collateral, which is exactly the film I was thinking of when I mentioned Mann’s name. He brings the same ability to use spaces to their utmost effectiveness, resulting in a breathless pursuit that can stand even alongside The Fugitive’s famous chase scenes. For crime aficionados, this will be a beautiful film.

If the movie has one flaw, it is that there is entirely too little of it. That’s a rare complaint to hear these days, when many wide release films feel overstuffed. This one has enough substance in terms of story, character and visuals for at least another half hour of runtime, but instead chooses to go short, probably in the realistic expectations that audiences won’t go see a long movie that isn’t part of a franchise. That’s really too bad, as some crucial things feel underdeveloped---Andre’s connection to his father is never hammered home emotionally, the character of Frankie never evolves beyond that of a plot device, and the ending is oddly abrupt. For those who crave a good, simple police thriller like those that used to be common, these will be relatively minor gripes, but when a movie is this well-done, it’s a shame to have to wonder about how it could have been even better in another era.

Verdict: Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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