“Days change, seasons change, people don’t change.”

Justin’s rating: Limpy-ki-yay

Justin’s review: The legendary Die Hard franchise deserved better than to go out on A Good Day to Die Hard. Bruce Willis deserved better. Heck, we deserved better. But there it is, Die Hard 5 stinking up the series like a dead rat floating in a swimming pool. It makes you wonder… what if? What if there was an actually great end to this series that did John McClane justice?

Well… maybe there is, friend. And all you’ve got to do is squint and allow for a different name for Bruce Willis’ cop character. Do that, you’ll get 16 Blocks, which is pretty much a stripped-down Die Hard with a Vengeance, perhaps a little coda to those action films.

The premise is simple and clean, which is what you generally want for a good action flick. Aging cop Jack Mosley (Willis) has to escort an extremely talkative perp named Eddy (Mos Def) from the police station to a courthouse 16 blocks away in New York City by 10:00 am. And that’d be one very boring story except that for various Secret Movie Reasons, powerful people do not want a hip-hop legend to cross town, and so they do everything in their power to kill him.

But is Jack McClane, sorry, John Mosley, sorry, Jack Mosley going to allow this? No. No he is not. Because while he has the worst mustache I’ve ever seen on Bruce Willis, he’s also got that trademark stubbornness that never says “die” even when it gets hard.

Willis has never been as vulnerable of an action hero as he is here. His detective is jaded, hungover, paunchy, has a bad leg, and definitely not up for some John Wick-style heroics. You’d totally expect him to step back and let the bad guys claim their prize right away, except that this pricks something deep inside of him — a sense of honor, perhaps, or a frustration at a broken system that finally comes to boil. He knows that he’s been picked precisely because he’s expected to roll over when they come for the perp, and that probably offends him as well.

The simple setup allows for a lot of development as this escort quest goes to hell very quickly, especially once Jack realizes that it’s his fellow cops (led by the calculating David Morse) who are orchestrating this attack. He’s about as much of an underdog as possible — but he’s going to stick it out to the end and try to get this guy to the courthouse in time to witness.

And once I saw how low and despicable these cops were, I really wanted to see Jack win. I really really wanted to see him win, and that’s exactly what you need to ratchet up an action film from your ordinary shoot-em-up to something far more intense.

Director Richard Donner never got a shot to helm a Die Hard movie, but if he had, this shows that the Lethal Weapon vet could’ve done quite well indeed. I was on the edge of my seat throughout this entire flick, even if it was a smaller and more intimate chase film with a cop who never, ever stops, even if the rest of us would.

Intermission!

• “I was trying to do a good thing.”
• “Life’s too long, and guys like you make it longer.”
• Using a motormouth as a distraction, great
• “You’re not doing what you always do, huh?”
• “I’m going to make you eat your words and lick your fingers too.”
• Yu-gi-oh!
• A transit bus makes a pretty conspicuous getaway vehicle
• “I’m not a good guy, Eddy.”