Mr. Movie: ‘21 Bridges’ is a common chase movie

Two second-rate criminals break into a high-class bar after hours. Turns out there’s a huge haul of uncut cocaine in the safe. They grab 50-kilos and run but not before they kill seven cops who just happen upon the scene mid-robbery.

“Black Panther’s” Chadwick Boseman is cast as Detective Andre Davis. He’s known for being a trigger-happy cop. Davis is charged with hunting the two men down. To do it, the police close down the 21 bridges that connect Manhattan with the rest of New York City.

Thus the title.

It also has little impact on the story. Davis and his narcotics division partner Frankie Burns have until dawn to nab the bad guys or the bridges will reopen. Burns is done by Sienna Miller. Scenes of the inconvenience to the citizens of New York City seem to be a natural. They — surprisingly — don’t appear in the plot.

Both are pressured by insurance company huckster and Oscar and Golden Globe winner J.K. Simmons. He plays the captain assigned to make sure neither bad guy survives and more or less orders Davis and Burns to kill the two men.

Catching them, and the mystery of why the cops suddenly showed up leads the two cops to lead us into a very predictable — but mercifully short — and quite violent chase movie.

That’s sad because the acting isn’t bad. Boseman is always interesting as is Miller. And I’ve never seen Simmons in anything that he didn’t help make better. All three do all they can to make this better but the screenplay by Adam Mervis (“The Philly Kid”) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (“World War Z,” “State of Play”) lets them down.

It is nothing short of awful.

Worse is the movie inexperience of director Brian Kirk. His experience is limited to TV (“Game of Thrones,” “Boardwalk Empire”) and this movie plays so much like a TV show that several times I expected him to stop things for a commercial break.

The movie might have been more interesting if had.

▪ Rated R for violence and language. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Southgate 10 and Pasco and Queensgate 12s, at the AMC Classic Kennewick 12 and at Walla Walla Grand Cinemas.

▪ Rating: 1 out of 5

This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 7:34 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: ‘21 Bridges’ is a common chase movie."