It's about time for those who encountered Chadwick Boseman in the role of "Black Panther," the actor showed viewers what else he's capable of. Sure, Boseman was back on the big screen in "Avengers: Infinity War" a few months later— but Marvel clearly underestimated his abilities, giving Boseman far too little to do, and then snapping him away for most of the sequel.
Now, with "21 Bridges," the star who demonstrated such promise as Jackie Robinson (in "42") and Thurgood Marshall ("Marshall") gets a chance to branch out, showing what somebody of his caliber can do for a routine police procedural otherwise.
The feature debut of veteran TV director Brian Kirk (“Game of Thrones,” “Luther”), “21 Bridges” is dark, cynical and nearly slick enough to disguise how stupid it is. Nearly. The movie introduces the novel idea of a New York City manhunt so hot, the mayor agrees to block every route leading into or out of Manhattan.
But it also suggests that the reason for taking such an extreme measure is that pretty much the entire New York police force is dirty, and that the criminals they’re pursuing must be cornered and killed before they can expose the whole scam.
“21 Bridges” arrives at a moment in American culture when public confidence in law enforcement has been hammered by fatal cases of police brutality, but even so, screenwriters Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan have gone too far.
They seem to imagine Boseman’s character, detective Andre Davis, as the tough-guy hero of a modern-day Don Siegel movie — a kind of East Coast “Dirty Harry” — where there’s no such thing as excessive force.
Among his NYPD peers, Davis is known as the kind of cop who kills cop killers: fast on the draw and equally quick to pull the trigger. Seven times he has shot suspects in the field, so often that Internal Affairs has opened an investigation into his behavior.
Statistics like those might give the public pause, but such a record makes Davis just the guy Capt. McKenna (J.K. Simmons) wants to clean up the mess after eight of his officers are left for dead at a crime scene. If the shooters are apprehended alive, lawyers will get involved, and there will be trials and appeals to make things miserable for the victims’ families — something Davis can relate to, since his father was a cop murdered by a junkie in the line of duty.
“I’m asking you to protect them from all that,” McKenna implores, partnering Davis with a tough narcotics detective, Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller), before turning them both loose, like a pair of trained-to-attack Dobermans on the trail of their prey.
But “21 Bridges” is no ordinary manhunt. The movie does something strange from the outset: It shows the drug heist that started everything from the perps’ perspective, and even though one of the criminals is clearly out of his mind (that would be Taylor Kitsch, looking strung out and dangerous compared with more levelheaded accomplice Stephan James), it’s perfectly evident that they’ve been set up.
They were told this would be a small-time stickup, only to discover 300 kilos of uncut cocaine at the scene. It’s also strange how quickly the cops show up, and how aggressively they attempt to secure the property.
