In the past week, we received news that Chadwick Boseman passed away from colon cancer. According to the news, he was diagnosed during the filming of “Captain America: Civil War”, which means the man did his entire run in Marvel while undergoing cancer treatment. That, my friends, is the definition of a “bad-ass”. This man’s career was peaked at a time when his personal life was in shambles, and what did he do? He took a front-line role in what is effectively the biggest franchise of all-time, and what was effectively 3 of the most successful films of all-time (at the time, that is). I haven’t seen his entire filmography, but I knew enough to want to see movies that he was in. He had that movie-star type dynamic.
So, when it comes to “21 Bridges”, I had already owned it. I meant to watch it in 2019 after it first came out, but I never got around to it. With the news in the past week, now seems like a good time. I remember the trailers for it when they were doing the initial marketing, and while I don’t generally go out of my way to watch cop movies, Chadwick Boseman was a good enough actor to put this one on my list. (I don’t actively avoid cop movies, it just hasn’t been a huge factor that plays into my “watch or not” determination.)
Based on the trailer, it looks like Boseman plays a cop with a particular knack for hunting down cop-killers after his cop father was killed when he was a child. After a heist-gone-wrong, a murder of a police officer in New York results in him getting the call to hunt them down. It looks like there is more to the heist than meets the eye, however, and based on the trailer and how movies generally go, Boseman’s character begins to see a gray area in his traditionally “black or white” viewpoint of police justice. Anyway, thats my prediction. Here is the trailer, and I’ll get back to you once its done.
I feel like I’ve seen this movie before… Not this ACTUAL movie, but a plot similar to this seems to come up every few years. A good cop gets brought into an investigation/task force/precinct with a clear vision of good and bad. Through intense circumstances, he realizes that something is not as it seems. Both the cops and criminals occupy the gray space in between good & bad… Honestly, this seems to be the majority of cop movies. Not that that’s necessarily bad, just a bit unoriginal.
This movie, with all of its unoriginal story and pacing, is still enjoyable to watch. Chadwick Boseman is great as Detective Andre Davis, and really commands all of the attention on the screen. The man had tremendous screen presence, and his performance in this movie definitely brought up the film as a whole, at least for me. RIP, Chadwick Boseman… It is sad to think that you are not able to bring more dynamic characters to the screen.
Beyond Boseman, we get Sienna Miller as a narcotics detective that is paired with Boseman. She does fine, and is a competent actress in her own right. I don’t know if her character was supposed to be obviously dirty throughout this film, but I feel like i saw that coming a long way off.
Then, we come to probably one of my favorite character actors working today in JK Simmons. The most iconic character this guy has played was J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films, but his best performance was probably “Whiplash”. God, I love that movie… Anyway, he is fine in this one. I don’t know if JK Simmons was needed for this role specifically as it isn’t one that requires someone of his caliber, but I guess a paycheck is a paycheck… Its always good to see him in films, so he brings this one up.
The rest of the cast aren’t actors with which I have a lot of familiarity. Stephen James did a good job as the criminal caught in a bad situation, and Taylor Kitsch was fine as the other criminal with more violent tendencies. There are a few other “those guy” actors in here, but none of a tremendous note.
Let’s do a quick plot synopsis… When two criminals look to steal some coke from a dealer, they find 300 kilos as opposed to 30. When they attempt to take what they can, they are interrupted by cops, whom they end up killing. With a total of 8 cops dead, the city calls in Detective Andre Davis, who responds by closing the city off from the outside world for 4 hours to allow them to track down the killers without having them leave Manhattan. Through the night, he notices cops are particularly inclined to shoot first, ask questions later, but that is chalked up to them being angry about the 8 dead cops.
Come to find out after both criminals are killed (one of which was looking to surrender at the time he was shot by another officer), Detective Davis finds evidence that cops were providing transportation services for the criminal underworld, and the coke the criminals stole was actually part of the shipments the cops were moving. The movie ends with Detective Davis essentially fighting off an entire precinct of officers coming to keep the arrangement quiet.
In general, I felt this was well cast and well directed. I would recommend this movie to people if they asked; it was definitely worth the time i spent watching it. This is probably best served as part of a Friday Movie Night. Maybe don’t make it “date night”, but it is certainly a good way to pass an hour and a half, and it is paced well enough that you won’t be looking at your watch during that time.
Ain't That Bad - Movie Blog 