NYPD detective Andre Davis is a successful and respected law officer, but has to deal with the legacy of his late father, a revered veteran Policeman. Davis struggles with the reputation for ruthlessly hunting down and killing cop killers, although he insists all his killings were justified and in self-defence in hearings with Internal Affairs, and rejects the label.

Two small-time crooks and military veterans, Michael Trujillo and Ray Jackson, agree to take a contract to rob a winery where thirty kilograms of cocaine are being stored. The heist goes badly wrong when the pair realise there is ten times more cocaine in the downstairs safe than they were told, and a police patrol coincidentally arrives at the location, the two panicking and opening fire, starting a shootout and causing Ray to shoot and kill eight officers. Michael warns Ray that they are now the targets of every cop in New York.

Assigned to the case, Davis is partnered with Narcotics Detective Frankie Burns, but the pair clash heads with FBI agents Butchco and Dugan, who demand to take over the case. Davis knows how to trap the killers, suggesting Manhattan to be locked down and all twenty-one bridges and tunnels linking it to the other boroughs shut down, for the first time in its history, and with the reluctant approval of the deputy mayor, the FBI, and precinct head, Captain McKenna, his plan goes ahead, but only until 5.00 the next morning. Ray and Michael go to their liaison, Bush, to contact the instigator of the heist to give them a bigger slice of the haul and their identities changed. As the Police swarm over the island of Manhattan, Adi, their fixer, gives them more money and new identities, telling them to get ready to depart for Miami later that morning. Managing to identify Ray, Michael and Bush from CCTV footage, the Police hunt them down, Butchco and Dugan getting to Bush first and shooting him, but Davis gets into a fight with Butchco when he finds him planting a gun on the body of the unarmed Bush, Hearing a team led by Lieutenant Kelly have already swooped on Adi’s apartment, Davis feels suspicious. Ray and Michael flee as the Police begin a firefight and Adi is badly wounded, giving Michael two flash drives before he leaves the apartment.

Confronting Ray and Michael after a chase, Davis and Burns open fire, Ray being fatally wounded, but Michael takes Burns hostage, holding her at gunpoint and telling Davis about the drives and how everything happening is strangely suspicious before escaping. Burns turns on him, claiming that with his reputation he can’t let criminals go, even though his partner was in danger. Taking a cheap hotel room, Michael manages to open the drives and read the contents, realising just why the Police operation constantly seemed to be one step ahead of the criminals and why they seem so determined to kill everybody involved with the heist….

Determined to get away, Michael makes another break for it, taking the first subway train out of Manhattan, only to be cornered at gunpoint by Davis, who promises to keep him alive if he surrenders, Michael realising it may be the only way he’ll survive, but some other officers are working on a different agenda…

With the title referring to the 21 bridges which link Manhattan Island to the rest of New York, one has to wonder why the first draft of this project was entitled 17 Bridges, but after a recount agrees on twenty-one as the number, this thriller, with an impressive cast and well-staged action sequences may stretch the credulity with the plot device of having the island isolated until dawn in the hunt for a pair of cop killers, but under the direction of Brian Kirk, a British TV veteran, responsible for episodes of Luther, Game Of Thrones and Penny Dreadful among many others, making his big-screen debut, the whole concoction manages to come together, helped by a ruthless pace and against-the-clock structure which characters frequently refer to.

What also bolsters Kirk’s film is a surprisingly robust cast, with Chadwick Boseman, not in the Black Panther Vibranium mesh skintight suit, Sienna Miller (Factory Girl / High-Rise) as his partner, the always reliable J.K.Simmons (the Spider-Man series) as their Police Captain, the always welcome Alexander Siddig (Peaky Blinders / TV’s Gotham), Keith David (There’s Something About Mary / The Thing), and as the cop killers, Taylor Kitsch (John Carter / TV’s Waco) and Stephan James (Selma / Race) as Ray and Michael respectively. very different characters in the former being a gun-toting psychopath which the latter, still being an ex-military man turned career criminal, at least has some acknowledgement of the consequences of what they have got themselves into.

Kirk’s film lays out high stakes, with not one, not two, but eight unfortunate NYPD cops being killed by the two potential robbers when the drug haul they plan to heist turns out to be rather bigger than expected, by a factor of ten, and Boseman’s Davis manages to get permission to shut down the island’s infrastructure. Saddled with a none-too-welcome partner, Burns, a role which got Sienna Miller some good notices, Boseman seems a good fit for the take-no-prisoners cop, whose level of kills of suspected cop murderers is slightly alarming, but audiences may not be too surprised to find that the whole crime of course implicates the NYPD itself, and indeed it's getting to the point where a film featuring an honest and non-corrupt force is becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Tooling along at a brisk 99 minutes, Kirk makes a vibrant and kinetic cinematic debut, packed with flashing lights, plot twists, car chases, gunfights (lots of gunfights) and action, largely down to veteran 2nd unit director and stunt arranger Spiros Razatos (Maniac Cop series / Fast & Furious series), which will keep most viewers diverted as long as they don’t examine the plot in too much forensic detail.

While Boseman got most of the critic’s accolades for his performance as the dedicated Davis, many felt the film wasn’t quite up to the task, such as Entertainment Weekly – ‘It’s not a bad setup, and 21 Bridges would be a better movie, easily, if it had let a little more nuance creep into its script. Instead, it lays the task squarely on Boseman’s shoulders – having him fill in all those broad strokes with his own fine lines, and spraying bullets and mayhem across the rest’. The Wrap believed if the film ‘… just settled on being a mildly entertaining single-night cop thriller, it could have gotten by on its well-shot action scenes and A-list cast. But once it introduces concepts it’s unable to fulfil, it becomes a massive disappointment’, while Total Film called it ‘A generic cop thriller that rumbles along thanks to a quality cast but ultimately offers nothing fresh’. Rather more harsh were The Hollywood Reporter, finding ‘Unlikely, far-fetched and downright preposterous events duke it out for bragging rights in 21 Bridges, 104 minutes of nocturnal big-city crime action that’s amped up to a borderline ridiculous level of nearly uninterrupted violence’.