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21 Bridges

6/10

Stars: Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, JK Simmons, Stephan James, Taylor Kitsch, Victoria Cartagena, Keith David

Director: Brian Kirk

Boseman's follow-up to his global success with Black Panther is a fast-paced, race-along police thriller casting him as an NYPD super-cop walking on water as pretty much the only incorruptible officer in the whole of good old New York.

Two small-time criminals. Ray (Kitsch) and Michael (James) are put on to a cocaine heist that staggers them with the amount of dope on show, but turns sour when carloads of cops show up on the scene.

Psychotic killer Ray shoots all eight of the law officers dead.

'Now,' says squad chief Simmons, surveying the carnage, ''I've got to wake up their partners in the middle of the night and tell them their lives are shattered.'

Career cop Andre Davis (Boseman) is given the case, along with assigned partner Burns (Miller), but, even as he pursues the fugitives, he smells a dark blue rat at the back of all this right from the start.

The plot is full of gaping holes, but the action comes so fast and furious you may miss most. And some characters bear charmed lives as bullets rain down on them.

There's nothing new here, but Boseman (who also co-produced), Miller and the rest of the cast give it professional performances that, together with the continual gun battles, at least keep us watching.

David Quinlan

USA 2019. UK Distributor: STX International. Colour by Company 3.
99 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 20 Nov 2019