One for the Fundamentalists

This is zeitgeist film that delivers its syrupy message with an even bigger dollop of distraction than usual and may fare better with the US bible belt than with a UK audience.

At first the task looks a lot simpler than when Clint Eastwood had to escort Sandra Locke cross country in ‘The Gauntlet’. 16 blocks is the distance Jack Mosley ( Bruce Willis) has to drive the ‘haemorrhoid’ Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) from a holding cell to the courthouse where he is to appear as a prosecution witness in two hours time two hours. It’s going to be a hot day in New York , and the paunchy blear-eyed cop is almost dead on his feet, although the shuffling gait owes as much to his drink habit as to end-of-shift weariness. Soon he is stuck in traffic, with the prisoner giving off with a Brooklyn nasal whine I haven’t heard since since Joe McDoakes was behind the eight ball.

It’s no wonder Jack makes an emergency stop at a liquor store but when he emerges with his brown bag someone is trying to shoot his prisoner. Nobody told him that Eddie was en route to testify against corrupt cops and that the entire NYPD resources will be dedicated to stopping Jack from delivering Eddie to the courthouse over the next hour and a half or so. When he calls for backup Jack’s cold-eyed boss, Frank (David Morse) responds and tries to make it look as if Eddie has shot one of his men, so he has an excuse to shoot Eddie. This rouses Jack’s stubborn streak, and the ensuing action involves a chase through the kitchens and laundries of China town – I thought for a moment we’d get a dragon dance when I heard the cymbals- and several doomed vehicles including a careering bus full of hostages. There’s still enough time for Jack to bond with Eddie, until like so many recent cop dramas he find they are not so different under the skin.

The insidious aspect of this film, like so many –sit-back-and enjoy the popcorn- thrillers is in the message that’s as simplistic as it’s repetitive, like those subliminal adverts they banned in the eighties. It starts with a riddle about choice, where doing the right thing appears to involve sacrifice. There follows a whole series of jokey comments that take on a gnomic significance: ‘I gotta be somewhere’ says Eddie, apparently referring to a reunion with a family member, and ‘We thought he’s do what he usually does’, say his colleagues about Jack. You just know there’s more to it than what’s on the surface.

A serial recidivist, Eddie has somehow picked up the unlikeliest of skills during his last stretch for armed robbery and the A4 notebook he’s been so concerned not to lose is not, as we suspect a list of underworld contacts but a tool of he trade. This is spooky enough, but the alarm bells really clang when Eddie starts telling the cynical Jack that he must look for ‘signs’ and that they were ‘supposed to meet’. Jack ignores him, not an unreasonable attitude given his record, but Eddie counters with ‘Anyone can change’. Jack has his own demons- ‘I’m not a good guy, Eddie’, and the encounter turns out redemptive for them both.

To join in the collective ‘Aahhh!’ of the concluding scene you’ll have to swallow a lot of twaddle, but with film-making as seamless as this maybe it’ll go down easier with some than with others. For some the ideology may keep getting in the way.