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.
It looks like Willis was snookered by the Hollywood mentality that always casts the star as the good guy (even though it's a role for which any number of actors would be better suited — the Nick Nolte of Affliction could have buried a fire in Jack; Jeff Daniels could have made his goodness palpable through the rot; the Tim Robbins of Mystic River might have made him creepily tormented). Frank, conceived not as a melodramatically diabolical schemer but merely a perverted enforcer of the law, has all of Jack's complexity with the butch rock-steadiness that Willis has shucked for the movie as well. The role of Frank, in fact, provides David Morse with enough material to give a major performance.
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