If there was an Oscar for inventive characterisation then it's one you couldn't really see cluttering Bruce Willis' mantlepiece.

Never veering far from the time-worn image of an action man as fast with a quip as he is on the draw, Bruce has carved a comfortable niche as the resourceful yet reluctant hero.

Here he adjusts the template a little to play NYPD gumshoe Jack Mosley, a whisky-sloshing veteran up to his walrus moustache in a bunch of renegade cops happy to bend the law to get results.

However, escorting Mos Def's motor-mouthed tea-leaf uptown for a courthouse appearance where he'll testify against an officer as crooked as a corkscrew, he decides "a line has been crossed."

Jack's partner of twenty years Frank Nugent (Morse) - seeing his career about to go down the tubes - wants to take out Def's whistle-blowing witness Eddie Bunker…but something tells Jack this ain't right.

The upshot is Jack, brimful of Jack Daniels and lugging a limp, and Eddie, terrified that the last thing the NYPD want to do is "protect and serve", have to reach the court by 10am when the jury's tenure expires.

Practically set in "real time" this has similarities to Colin Farrell's Phone Booth as Jack and Eddie slowly make their way via subterranean Chinese laundries and across cluttered roof-tops.

OK, they should have hailed a cab, but there's some tense moments along the way as David Morse slimy cop-gone-bad stalks their every move and Jack and Eddie get the measure of one another.

In fact, Eddie wants to open a cake shop in Seattle while Jack wants to achieve redemption by drawing a line under his past dismeanors as a bad cop. (Eddie's dream seems the more realistic).

Willis does what he always does but that's not to say that's a bad thing - you can almost feel the adrenaline shunting the alcohol out of his system when he hits his stride.

That things slip into well-worn Hollywood formula by the end is only to be expected...but there's thrills and spills aplenty and Bruce doesn't disappoint.

Tim Evans