A Critical Look at Digital Painting - 16 Blocks

The look: Kind of blue
Not five minutes into 16 Blocks, Bruce Willis's burned-out cop is already picking through a dead man's refrigerator and making himself at home on the poor guy's couch. It's already clear that he's not exactly the best representative of New York's finest – and the whole film has been given a dingy color tinge that suggests the shade of police blues. It's a smart decision that suffuses the whole film with a melancholy sense of honor and duty, even if it doesn’t show off the New York locations to their best advantage – and because the film only shot for two weeks in New York City, the consistent visual strategy probably helps smooth out the transitions between the real Gotham City and its cinematic imposter, Toronto. The resulting look places the story a few notches past "realism" without drawing attention to itself, and really helps set this thriller apart.