Bomb on moving bus that can’t slow down. Cop takes down drug dealer in high rise run by criminals. Post apocalyptic car chase through the desert. Hitman with memory loss. A great premise goes a long way to making a great action movie. 21 Bridges has a great premise like those all timers – cop hopes to catch cop killers in late night locked down Manhattan – but I think the writers know that too, which is why the movie feels like a missed opportunity at times during its fun chase.
Since his dad was murdered by the bad guys, Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) has devoted his life to law enforcement, specifically bringing cop killers to justice. He often says its in his DNA, it’s not just a job. After a minor internal affairs investigation into Andre’s last case, he’s immediately brought into a peculiar nighttime crime. A couple criminals (Taylor Kitsch and Stephan James) broke into a Brooklyn restaurant and stole a few bags of cocaine…but left behind 90% of the uncut drugs and a few slain cops who tried to stop them. Knowing that they escaped into Manhattan, Andre orders all 21 bridges and transit into the city closed overnight so he, Captain McKenna (JK Simmons), and narcotics officer Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller) can lock down the island and find these cop killers and bring them to whatever justice means to them.
When it comes to the specifics of the chase of the two criminals (named Ray and Michael by the way), 21 Bridges is excellent for a long time. The minute those two rob the restaurant, we know pretty much who they are as characters, and that something was off in their robbery attempt. Then Andre shows up, and sets up the premise for the nighttime chase, and shows how smart he is. That efficiency applies for the first hour of the movie, as the two relatively amateur criminals try to find out their escape strategy, and Andre and Frankie try to figure out what they’re doing. We also see how hard this might be for Andre, who is confused by the crime scene and needs to interrogate people, but runs afoul of trigger happy cops wanting to kill the guys who took the lives of their brothers and sisters. Along the way, we get shootouts, we get intense interrogation, and we get CSI mystery evaluation. 21 Bridges does the Fugitive blueprint of great action and a decent mystery that exists under the radar to solid effect.
The third act is where 21 Bridges could have gone into action movie rarified air. I think the creative team was more interested in ending the movie quickly, so it rushed the ending to get everybody home quickly and mostly satisfied. However, like Get Out, the writers set up a really interesting ending scenario here that would have delivered a killer plot twist that fits. Instead, we get a standard bad buy monologue and shootout, with all sorts of logic questions to be answered. Also, the big mystery is pretty easy to spot if you’re paying attention, and gets explained away without actually showing any of the explanation, rendering the reveal pretty hollow. Sure the shootout is really fun, but with how deftly the first hour is handled, it’s a bummer that that shootout didn’t carry the significance it was intended to.
But “Manhattan on lockdown” is still a fun premise, and everyone involved in 21 Bridges is enjoying themselves telling this story. Plus we get to see the Black Panther jump over obstacles like the cat he’s named after. Wakanda forever, Chadwick! And Taylor Kitsch: you need to rediscover your clear eyes and full heart so you don’t get lost.