NYPD detective Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) is sleepwalking through the latter days of his life. Eternally drunk, out of shape and hobbling here to there upon a bad leg, the guy only cares about getting though his shifts as transparently as possible. In fact, already nursing a hangover, all he wants to do is clock out, head home and pass out in front of the TV. It’s just after 8:00 a.m. and his day is done, nothing for this ghost to do but disappear into the morning traffic like he always does every morning.

But today Jack’s usual routine isn’t possible. Saddled with the task of transporting a witness, motor-mouthed petty crook Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), sixteen blocks across town to the courthouse, after five minutes with the guy the detective already knows it is a job he doesn’t want. Redemption comes in all shapes and sizes, however, and when Jack discovers cops in his own department, including his former partner legendary detective Frank Nugent (David Morse), want Eddie dead he finds himself at an unexpected and unwanted crossroads.

Now Mosley has a decision to make. He can do what he always does; take his normal path and look the other way, letting Eddie die by doing so. The other option is to wake up, become a cop again and do the right thing, a thing he maybe should have done six years prior.

Jack chooses to wake up, and with his arousal the New York police department might never be the same.

The new contemporary thriller “16 Blocks” is a hard-boiled urban western of redemption and survival. It is an old-school potboiler, flipping from scene to scene swiftly and with little fanfare or pointless showmanship. It is a straight-forward adventure, director Richard Donner (“Lethal Weapon” series, “Superman”) keeping the wheels turning effortlessly, hitting few speed bumps along the way to the film’s requisite hardscrabble conclusion.

In all honesty, this is the director’s best work in over a decade. He’s taken Richard Wenk’s efficient screenplay and stripped it down to the bare minimum, relying upon the actors and their situations to keep the audience engaged. Put simply, they do not make inner city thrillers like this one anymore, the days of Anthony Mann, Fritz Lang, Edgar G. Ulmer, Donald Siegel and Robert Aldrich so far gone only those with a decent DVD collection even know who they are. It’s a movie made for people who actually have an attention span, constructed for viewers willing to be satisfied with meat and potatoes and nothing else.

These are all good – very good – things, all of them worthy of praise. “16 Blocks” is a fine picture, strongly acted by the three leads and made with expert craftsmanship by those both in front and behind the camera. It is a effective reminder of the kind of films Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood, Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart used to make in their sleep, a journeyman effort filled with tense standoffs and crackerjack set pieces self-indulgent visualists like Michael Bay can only dream of crafting.

But that doesn’t make Donner’s latest great. It is good, perfectly solid B-grade entertainment making those who loved pictures like “T-Men,” “Kiss of Death,” “High Sierra” and “Out of the Past” happy. It is an example of worthwhile genre filmmaking you just don’t see anymore. It is tense and terrific in many outstanding ways. Yet that still doesn’t make “16 Blocks” a great movie, and the only reason that’s even something worth pointing out is because this tough guy throwback, frustratingly, could be.

Wenk’s screenplay is solid and gets the job done, but it also unfortunately doesn’t contain a single solitary surprise. Even with the artful black and white opening, once things get going there is no hiding where things for Jack and Eddie must eventually end up. More so, Donner doesn’t make an attempt to mask this obviousness, spelling it out for viewers time and time again when there really isn’t a reason to do so. It all comes to a shootout climax that should never even happen, this final’s singular bullet an idiotic coda to what was otherwise a nicely nuanced crime melodrama worthy of applause.

I almost feel like I’m splitting hairs. For the most part, I have little bad to say about what Donner and company have constructed. Mos Def shows once again why he just may be the best rapper-turned-actor working today, Morse is a satisfyingly conflicted villain and Willis wrestles with his internal demons splendidly. It’s shot economically by Glen MacPherson (“Rebound”), tightly edited by Steve Mirkovich (“Godsend”) and scored stirringly by Klaus Badelt (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”). Other than a few annoying slow downs here and there, the film gets the job done, and it’s hard to admit disappointment when that so seldom seems to be the case, especially with thrillers, in this day and age.

But I am disappointed. Not so much to convince people to not see it and not to the point I’d even remotely say I didn’t like it, just enough that it makes me slightly uncomfortable talking about the thing. The seeds for greatness are in “16 Blocks,” you can see them on every fiber and every strand of its plot mechanics. They don’t blossom, however, and all Donner and company can bring to life is a solid ‘good,’ and while that’s sure to be more than enough for the majority who see I still wanted more. Call me a pain in the behind but this is one case where being good just isn’t good enough.