I won a pair of advanced screening passes to see 16 Blocks in a contest from Metro News. It was sketchy really because I got a random 1 minute call from a cell phone telling me that I had won, and I was supposed to wait around outside for the tickets right before the movie started. Anyways, I went with Chard and apparently I really did win (and have a t-shirt to prove it).

This was the first time that I went to an advanced screening so it was pretty cool, there were freebies from Flow 93.5 and other giveaways which I didn’t win. The security was tight as they didn’t want the film released on the internet. There were a variety of warnings, including a search before being allowed into the theatre. This was actually pretty funny as it involved passing one of those magnetic wands over my limbs. I naturally set the detector off with my phone, keys and camera; which I volunteered them to the security guard. He continued scanning and the iPod in my front pants pocket set of the wand. Interestingly, he decided to to do nothing about that! I could easily have snuck in a small camcorder in a pocket that size. Ironically, he said that I had to leave my Metro News bag, which I and plenty of other attendees received our free t-shirts in, outside. This was incredibly stupid as there was no identification in it and I would probably have lost it. I volunteered to let the guard search it and fortunately for him, another much more level-headed rent-a-cop said it was unnecessary.

Now about the movie. The best part was that the “feature presentation” clip started right away, there were no trailers! The premise of 16 Blocks was simple; Bruce Willis’ character had to escort a witness (played by Mos Def, hence the Flow 93.5 connection) to a courthouse 16 blocks away. This movie was filmed in Toronto and was played up as a tense thriller, in reality it was a cheesy, failed attempt at a intelligent plot. As the movie progresses and mildy intruiging plot twists occur, the past events don’t really make sense the way they were presented. I bet the writers were hoping that we would forget the earlier parts of the movie.

The characters played by Willis and Mos Def were both the high and low points of the movie. Willis played the tough luck, alcoholic cop pretty well but Mos Def, oh what can I say, was insanely annoying. His character, the comedic relief that talked constantly, had an accent that was harsh to the ear, and difficult to understand. I felt like a black guy watching Rush Hour with Jackie Chan doing the comedic relief instead of Chris Tucker. This by itself made the movie crappy.

Anyway, to draw my attention away from Mos Def, I noticed that throughout the movie there were uniforms at various corners of the theatre using night vision goggles to scope out people recording the movie. Again I don’t think this is a very good form of security, all I would need to do is tape some black duct tape over the LEDs on a camcorder to remain undetected!

My rating for 16 Blocks is two stars out of five (**). Don’t rent or pay to see it, just wait for it on TV.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: moviereview