A drug robbery goes horribly bad; police officers get killed, and a hard-as-nails cop shuts down Manhattan to get them.
It feels like anything positive I have to say about the film will be generic, and everything wrong will be thoroughly detailed. So, I’ll try to balance it out. The corruption in the police is old news. One man is fighting against the system, too. The fact that racism is left out is hopeful. And shutting down Manhattan to achieve a bust is… innovative. 21 Bridges is definitely entertaining and will make you forget your problems for an hour and forty minutes. But implausibility becomes a major issue.
It’s giving me the sense that a third of the film is missing. A third of the film has been left in the editing room. In an hour and forty minutes, we don’t get enough character development. ‘Trigger’ doesn’t earn his name, yet it shows towards the end that he has skills. Ray (brilliantly played by the always brilliant Taylor Kitsch), the guy who is not to be messed with no matter what does not get the time (or opportunity) to go against ‘Trigger’ and give us, the audience, a spectacle. So, their brief encounter is anticlimactic. Then, the four hours of script time (the timeframe in which the cop killers must get caught) must be squeezed into less than an hour of screen time with action that happens way too fast and disillusions the magic. To cut a long story short, the parallel action is at warp speed, jumping from one clue to the next, leading to resolution, leaving us with no absorption of any information. I would expect more detail with the Russo Brothers putting on the producers’ hat, especially with character development.
To finish up on a good note, the robbery in the opening act is meticulously shot, with the editing offering clean cuts and, coincidentally, clean action. Also, Chadwick Boseman is the right man for the role, and if you want to see him properly unfold his action skills, watch Message from the King (2016).
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