Every few years Hollywood tries to recreate a noir classic. This effort by Carl Franklin (directing his own adaptation of Walter Mosley's raw material) was not successful. Denzel Washington does what he can in the lead and is often as bemused as the audience is, especially when Tom Sizemore lets his Natural Born Killers loose down at post-war Malibu. Don Cheadle has the most straightforward fun as a gun-toting Texan version of his character from Boogie Nights. It is a mystery to me why the woman in the blue dress, Jennifer Beals, would be considered at all devilish.
Roger Ebert: three stars, Chinatown overtones, an arbitrary resolution. Janet Maslin: has "parallels with the world-class Chinatown."
