'16 BLOCKS' A LONG WALK, AND TOUGH TO KEEP UP THE PACE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

'WHAT THEY tell you is not what really happened,'' Bruce Willis' bleary, disembodied voice tells us in the opening moments of Richard Donner's intermittently efficient cop movie, ``16 Blocks.'' ``I was trying to do the right thing.''

Soon after, we meet Willis' character, NYPD detective Jack Mosley, a sleepy-eyed, paunchy, punchy cop who walks with a pronounced limp and drinks his breakfast out of a brown paper bag. Assigned to watch a crime scene, a colleague reminds Mosley not to touch anything. Mosley proceeds to practically ransack the place before collapsing on the couch with a bottle of booze. A few minutes later, Mosley gets an unwanted assignment. He's to escort a small-time criminal, Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) the 16 Manhattan blocks from lock-up to the courthouse, where he's set to testify before a grand jury. What Mosley doesn't know is that there's a dirty dozen cops, including his former partner (David Morse), waiting to kill Eddie to keep him from talking. It's a fine B-movie set-up, and for the first 45 minutes or so, Donner keeps things properly nerve-jangling, using a shaky hand-held camera and a cacophony of blaring sounds to put you on edge. But the movie - which takes place more or less in real time - can't resist convention, giving the motor-mouthed Eddie ridiculous soliloquies about opening a bakery and having Willis' Mosley shake off the shakes and behave like an action hero whenever the plot requires.

The actors keep things interesting in their own way. Willis can convey spiritual exhaustion with the best of them. And Morse, of late, has become the go-to guy whenever a filmmaker needs a smart, smiling human tumor. Def takes a page from the Johnny Depp Bizarro Handbook of Acting, using a helium-fueled nasal whine that seems pitched somewhere between Jerry Lewis and Urkel. It's craaaaazy and more grating than a million car alarms going off at the same time, but also, at times, properly effective in adding to the ways Donner wants to get under your skin.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

16 BLOCKS - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, intense sequences of action, some strong language)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse.

Director: Richard Donner.

Running time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: As close to a B-movie as Richard Donner will ever get, this nerve-jangling cop thriller is pretty good until it caves to convention.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

A New York City cop (Bruce Willis) must escort a fast-talking witness (Mos Def) from police custody to the courthouse, an ordinary task with unexpected complications, in ``16 Blocks.''