In the era of "political correctness", when the entire American history had been re evaluated from the perspective of "minorities" (blacks, Indians, women etc.), even the American myths and specifically American cultural products got themselves made over by having protagonists from those social groups. One of the examples was the series of detective novels by Walter Motley. The setting of the novels was very familiar to the fans of Raymond Chandler, yet the protagonist was black. Devil in a Blue Dress, first of the novels, was adapted to screen in 1995 in a film directed by Carl Franklin.
The plot takes place in 1948, during the time when many black Americans began to leave behind poverty and racial bigotry of South and head to more prosperous and seemingly more enlightened cities in the rest of the country. For some of them Los Angeles looked like a promised land, including WW2 veteran Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (played by Denzel Washington) who got himself a decent job in defence plant and even afforded house of his own. But the dream is shattered when Rawlins loses the job. With mortgage to pay, he is forced to take all kinds of odd jobs, including the one offered by suspicious-looking private detective De Witt Albright (played by Tom Sizemore). Albright tells him that he was hired to track Daphne Monet (played by Jennifer Beals), missing girlfriend of Todd Carter (played by Terry Kinney), Los Angeles aristocrat and favourite candidate in mayoral race. According to Albright, Daphne likes to frequent jazz clubs, black neighbourhoods and other places where white detective can't conduct his investigation discreetly. So Rawlins agrees to work as Albright's eyes and ears and soon lives to regret it, since the seemingly simple missing persons case soon turns out to be part of vast conspiracy involving corrupt politicians, blackmail and murder.
The worst thing about Devil in a Blue Dress is the thing that was supposed to give it film noir credentials - the crime mystery. Whole plot seems recycled from the dozens of similar movies and is not exactly engaging to the viewer. Thankfully, talented writer and director Carl Franklin was less interested in the plot per se, and more in its racial perspective. Franklin in his wonderful One False Move proved that he can handle race issues in his films very well, and Devil in a Blue Dress isn't exception. Many things that seemed banal and stereotypical in classic noirs look very unusual here – for example, protagonist must worry about thuggish and racist police as much as he worries about "classic" baddies; as a black man, he was never able to work in the law enforcement, so he lacks detective experience etc. All those things look alien today, but this is not because they weren't real; they were just swept under the carpet in "conventional" film noirs. Another historically accurate, but interesting thing about Devil in a Blue Dress is a feeling of optimism that was prevalent in late 1940s black neighbourhoods of Los Angeles - the very same places that would symbolise poverty, despair and racial violence in 1990s.
Franklin spends a lot of effort to achieve historical accuracy, ranging from the careful selection of costumes, period music and Jennifer Beals who perfectly fits the stereotype of noirish femme fatales. Denzel Washington again proves his immense acting ability and radiates a lot of screen presence in role which is rather unusual for him. Among plenty of good character actors, white and black, the most memorable is Don Cheadle in rather brief but chilling appearance as Rawlins' psychopathic friend. All this proves Franklin's ability to recognise wealth of well-defined and multi-dimensional characters. If he was able to properly recognise strengths and weaknesses of the plot, this film could have been a real masterpiece. However, even with such flaws, Devil in a Blue Dress is another fine example of modern film noir.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on November 18th 2002)
==
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ Cent profile https://beta.cent.co/@drax Minds profile https://www.minds.com/drax_rp_nc Uptrennd profile https://www.uptrennd.com/user/MTYzNA
Brave browser: https://brave.com/dra011
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/8512-devil-in-a-blue-dress?language=en-US
Critic: AA
