There is an absolutely fantastic moment that opens this movie. It takes place at the funeral of a uniformed police officer, just after we cut to a drone shot of the outside of the church. It is a joyless day; drab and overcast. We’re looking down at the street from a great height, when the hundreds of police officers standing outside pop a perfectly synchronized salute. It is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Director Brian Kirk doesn’t pause for an ovation. He approaches and executes the shot with such flamboyant confidence that it belies the fact that 21 Bridges is his feature debut.
Chadwick Boseman – upon whose shoulders this entire narrative rests – plays André Davis, the cop they call when things go horribly bad. And things have. Here, he’s tasked with tracking down two men, one white (Taylor Kitsch) and one black (Stephan James), who have shot and killed so many cops that it warrants shutting down Manhattan and “flooding the island with blue”. A ridiculous conceit, no doubt, but one that you quickly forgive given how well it’s pulled off.
Making Manhattan the scene of a locked-room mystery is no easy feat, but what Kirk does is lean into the neo-noir roots of the genre (see: Insomnia, Assault on Precinct 13) as a way to create a thoughtful, slow-burning, and thematically rich detective story. He takes the dark hued and steamy streets of the city and uses them to create a palpable sense of claustrophobia. Making the audience feel, like those being hunted, that the walls are constantly closing in.
Boseman brings an unspoken conflict to the role of André Davis. He may be the killer of cop killers, but it is a role that he is wholly uncomfortable with. It is a label that undermines who he really is, a cautious and contemplative seeker of truth. Yes, he is unrepentant over the lives he’s taken, but only because he knows for an absolute certainty that what he did was justified.
These are the kinds of moral imperatives that 21 Bridges dabbles in. And while it doesn’t quite double down on that discourse quite like Sidney Lumet does with Serpico or Dog Day Afternoon, the movie is involving enough to not feel like a pale imitation.
The idea that Boseman plays a black enforcer in a world dominated by white cops is also something that is wonderfully implied. The writers know that we know. They know that we know that they know. To that end, they dispense of the familiar beats that we’ve come to expect. There is no scene stealing soliloquy on how it isn’t easy being green. There is no unforeseen third act twist. We are aware that something is amiss from the get-go, and the filmmakers use that tension to drive character and action instead of plying us with unnecessary exposition.
Where 21 Bridges really shines, however, is how it treats its depiction of the police with equal parts respect and disdain. This is something that could just have easily slipped into caricature or come off as sanctimonious, but the movie’s tight focus on people instead of plot keep it from descending to such depths. With the national discourse in the United States so crowded with questions over whether black or blue lives matter more, 21 Bridges somehow manages a narrative that builds on that conversation without getting bogged down in the back and forth of it all. Which makes it nuanced and self-assured in a way few procedurals are.
There are also plenty of shoot-outs, and chases, and Mexican standoffs, and all of those other things that make these sorts of movies thrilling and entertaining. They just don’t make these sorts of B-movies anymore. At least not with this A-list of a cast. And definitely not for the big screen. 21 Bridges is a well-made, refreshingly old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.
21 Bridges
99 minutes
Director: Brian Kirk
Writers: Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, Stephan James, Keith David, Taylor Kitsch, and J. K. Simmons
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