21 Bridges – 2019 – R
Having spent a few crazy fun days in NYC last spring hailing planes, trains and automobiles to and around Manhattan, my curiosity was piqued as to how an NYPD manhunt that completely locked down the island would play out. NYC’s George Washington Bridge alone is the world’s busiest, 103 million vehicles crossing it per year, 282,192 a day. Quite a doomsday backup! And that’s just one of the 21 bridges! However, my imagination must take over because the film, obviously just foisting about for an enticing title, didn’t go anywhere with the potential destruction derby of a cops and robbers chase confined to Armageddon gridlock. On the upside, the film did feature the longest, wildest, baddest foot chase in movie history with trigger happy, Internal Affairs regular, macho man, Super Detective Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther) chasing smart, logical criminal-with-a-conscious Michael (Stephan James) through the Meatpacking District on the far west side of Manhattan. A street sprint to end all sprints! Best part of the movie!
In a nutshell, two bad guys, young Michael and 12-stepper, military veteran Ray hit a Brooklyn restaurant expecting a quick in-and-out heist of 30 kilos of cocaine but, whoa baby, packed neatly away are not 30 but 300 kilos of pure, uncut blow. Dang. Shoulda brought bigger backpacks boys! Oddly, a group of NYPD officers show up at almost the same time, rap-tap-tapping on the establishment’s locked doors. The unplanned convergence of cops and robbers ends bloody and badly, eight officers down, seven die at the scene, one later at the hospital. Clearly the officers calmly knocking on the restaurant door were caught off guard. Why is that? Detective Davis wonders the same and soon sorts through the clues and loops us in. Seems the drug stash is all in a day’s work for some dirty cops of the 85th precinct. The police were there on business. Not good, not good.
You get the vibe. Cop killers, dirty cops and super cop on a mission. A mission that starts out as a justifiable, rabid hunt for cop killers but quickly gets complicated when sharp and shrewd Detective Davis deduces the bad guys include his own and the evidence needed to dismantle the thin blue line conspiracy rests with bringing the cop killers in alive. With Ray early on shot to smithereens, Davis desperately turns his focus on taking Michael alive—competing with the entire NYPD blue army who, for reasons of righteous revenge or evidence suppression, want Michael dead. Davis doesn’t know who fits in each category so, unable to trust anyone, he’s forced to work alone. The blue on blue high stakes, deadly race for Michael takes up most of the film’s 99 packed minutes.
21 Bridges is a low budget B movie that does its best to smuggle in a hint of social commentary, entertain the masses and bring the scrum of bad guys to justice. Yes, the dialogue is nothing that would probably ever be said. Yes, there are holes in the plot that could only be explained by magical incantations. No, the public apparently experienced zero inconveniences despite all NYC transportation options eliminated for hours. But, yes, I still enjoyed 21 Bridges. Walking out I kept delivering my best deadpan, “You’re going down,” to anyone in the gathered Frozen II Disney toddler mob who looked my way. That was fun—and together with the longest, wildest, baddest foot chase in movie history—made 21 Bridges worth giving up an afternoon of my time.
