21 BRIDGES **

The "21 Bridges" of the title are the twenty-one bridges that link Manhattan Island to the rest of New York in Brian Kirk's excellent, if a little over-the-top, thriller. Chadwick Boseman is the detective who takes the decision to close them in his hunt for the killers of several New York cops except this just isn't a straightforward manhunt; there is a lot of drugs involved as well as probable police corruption. It's a taut, (an economical ninety-nine minutes), exciting little picture, beautifully shot by Paul Cameron, almost entirely at night, and well cast and played. Of course, we aren't talking Michael Mann here, (though Mann could do a lot worse); this is a much smaller affair and its set pieces are a lot less expansive but it's also one of the better action pictures out there at the moment and it shows that Kirk could be a genre director well worth the watching.