The problem here is that the values according to which Jack is reborn aren't spiritual, really, they're political, and thus more amenable to reasoned debate than spiritual parable. When Frank defends himself in the subterranean parking garage of the court house (here the symbolic pits that lie beneath true justice) by saying that he covered up the accidental death of a witness he was intimidating because the guy was going to blow an otherwise legitimate case, his point of view is not Satanic, it's pragmatic in a way that offends our civilized notions of fair play, and our republican wariness of unbridled government actors, both of which underlie our procedural restrictions on the state's police power.

Frank's attitude is the converse of the view that it's better to let a guilty man go free on a technicality than to subvert the rights of the accused, and I imagine his attitude has a gut appeal to a lot of people. We resist this appeal, however, because we also understand the arguments in favor of separating the functions of investigation and enforcement on the one hand and adjudication on the other. We don't want the cops evaluating the evidence produced by their own work and deciding which witnesses will be heard by the tribunal.

It's too easy to imagine that a combined police-judicial department could achieve a 100% conviction rate at the expense of the "niceties" of procedure and would lead on a regular basis to what we see in 16 Blocks — the self-protecting murder by cops of a witness for the greater good of fighting crime. Unlike followers of a totalitarian regime, we don't want the state to win at any cost just because it's the state.

If there were any drama here it would not be romantic, but tragic: the story of a man who becomes uncivilized doing the dirty work of defending civilization, and Frank, not Jack, would be the protagonist. The problem with 16 Blocks as a romance, and hence a work of fantasy-projection entertainment, is that the role of Jack, a dispirited soak of a cop with a gut like a saddle bag and a game leg, doesn't draw on what makes Bruce Willis a star. Willis is best as an unassuming character with drive, cunning, and endurance we might not guess at.

He has the ultimate warrior's adaptability but he's the opposite of a barbarian in that he'd never vaunt. It's enough for him to know he's got what it takes and he communicates to us minimally — with a glimmer in his eye, a smirky half-smile, muttered wisecracks that other characters don't hear. His charisma is cumulative and light-spirited; he's turned bluff manly reticence into a comic style.

The script of 16 Blocks tries to give Jack complexity by implicating him in the corruption, but Willis doesn't have the actorly skills for that kind of complexity. Playing a man who has crumpled morally, Willis becomes physically unprepossessing, a semi-animated hulk. You can imagine, perhaps, Fredric March taking on the padding and the guilty air and merging them with a character (even if in a highly theatrical way). March would maintain his actor's wakefulness; Willis doesn't. At the same time, Willis is an honest actor, and so he really seems depressive, until, that is, the plot requires him to suddenly show preternatural alertness and ninja skills. We've seen Jack boozing before 9:00 am but the effects burn off instantly once the movie needs him to function as an action hero.