Directed by Carl Franklin. Written by Dave Collard. Again starring Denzel Washington, this time as a police chief in a small town in Florida. Notionally he's split with wife Eva Mendes, implausibly a detective in Miami with an excess of forgiveness, and is back with his irresistible high school sweetheart Sanaa Lathan who's married to ex-footballer beefcake Dean Cain. Things get all scammy and Denzel is forced to react to each twist as it comes along until he can unravel the whole show on a boat (echoing Franklin's earlier One False Move). After that Mendes knows she'll never find a better man and life is reset to the halcyon days before the movie started. John Billingsley's Chae is sometimes effective comic relief but too often just plain annoying. It does not cohere. It's not Miami Vice, not even when Denzel is dangling from a rusted-out seventh-storey hotel balcony railing.
Roger Ebert: three stars. The screenplay was inspired by The Big Clock. Elvis Mitchell at the New York Times: "shallow — but empty".
