‘A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble…’
Denzel Washington’s ’90s output was a mixed bag. For every Malcolm X and Philadelphia, there was dross like The Bone Collector. Carl Franklin’s neo-noir pastiche Devil in a Blue Dress falls somewhere in the middle. At its best, it is a gritty portrayal of America in the ’50s with some interesting stuff to say about crime amid racial tensions. At its worst, it is too self-conscious and indebted to the past to really work. It doesn’t help that L.A. Confidential covered this same ground a couple of years later much more successfully.
When Easy Rawlins (Washington) is hired by a shady white man (Tom Sizemore) to find a mysterious woman, the eponymous girl in the blue dress (Jennifer Beals), he stumbles into a political conspiracy and soon finds himself dangerously over his head.
While Franklin does a great job in making sure this film looks stunning, fully capturing the neon-bathed boom years of ’50s America, not everything here is delivered as successfully. Washington is great, but the supporting cast is forgettable (Don Cheadle aside), and I could do without the corny voiceover.
Despite running at only 1hr 42mins, Devil in a Blue Dress still feels too long, and while the bloody conclusion ensures the film goes out in a hail of bullets, there is a nagging feeling that the destination isn’t really worth the journey.
Devil in a Blue Dress has slipped out of the public consciousness since its release and it’s easy to see why. A decent film that never threatens to achieve greatness.