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✓simple goalREVIEW: The period detective thriller looks at the American Dream through the eyes of a black man worried about the mortgage.By HENRY SHEEHANThe Orange County RegisterIn Los Angeles 1948, a black man discovers that the best way to hold onto the promise of the American Dream is by grappling with the American Nightmare. Thus goes “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the superior adaptation of Walter Mosley’s best-selling novel.Thanks to screenwriter and director Carl Franklin, “Devil” has blossomed into a compulsively watchable mystery, a red-olently atmospheric period piece, and a provocative meditation on race, ambition and civics.It also features one of the best performances Denzel Washington has given in a long time, maybe ever. As Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, an unemployed machinist turned private investigator by economic necessity, Washington depicts an extraordinary conversion.Although World War II vet Easy had more than a brush with crime in his hometown of Houston — at least one character in the movie thinks he murdered someone — he is a bit naive when it comes to one subject: himself. Part of the appeal of “Devil in a Blue Dress” is how it shows Easy’s character, and his capacity for violent action, as it is revealed to Easy himself.When we first see him, all Easy is worried about is making his mortgage. His south L.A. home is the pride of his life, but the well-paying job he had at an aircraft plant has disappeared in a miasma of racism. Now he spends his days circling want ads and worrying about how long the bank will hold off.It’s that anxiety about his house that overcomes his good judgment when a bartender friend, Joppy (Mel Winkler), introduces him to a flashily dressed, tough-talking white guy, Dewitt Albright (Tom Size-more)r r vmji'Devil in a Blue Dress'► Stars: Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore► Behind the scenes: Directed by Carl Franklin. Screenplay by Franklin, based on the novel by Walter Mosley. Produced by Jesse Beaton and Gary Goetzman.► Playing: Opens today throughout Orange County► Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes► Rating: R for violence, language and scenes of sexuality► Grade: Adollars to help*him find a white woman, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who has disappeared somewhere inside L.A.’s black community.Easy finds himself at the bottom of a swirling cauldron of intrigue, involving not just Monet but also mayoral candidate Matthew Terrel (Maury Chaykin), Monet’s boyfriend and Terrel opponent Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), and the dangerous Albright. By the time he gets himself out of trouble, he has had to call on the aid of an old Houston friend, Mouse (Don Cheadle), who seems easygoing enough but who goes around armed to the teeth and whose first solution to every problem is a bullet.“Devil in a Blue Dress” succeeds on any number of levels, including design. Shot by Tak Fujimoto in muted but exquisitely expressive browns, blacks and soft earth tones, the movie offers a world of shades and unexpected corners. The period detail is remarkably intricate, with the ambient music acknowledging the era’s mixture of holdover swing, oncoming bop and popular rhythm and blues.Elmer Bernstein’s score surrenders echoes of the decade’s detective mysteries but with its own peculiar signature. Yet, like the old cars and decor, it all remains part of an ordered tapestry, enhancing, rather than obscuring, our views of the characters.Although it’s hard to imagine what could obscure this collection of types. Sizemore, who played the self-aggrandizing detective in 4‘Natural Born Killers,” is a perfect crime-thriller villain, his motives ambiguous and murky but his hair-trigger'DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS': Denzel Washington plays Easy, a guy who just wants to keep his own roof over his head, in the '40s-era thriller.more lethal and more complex, a killer by instinct and reflex who nevertheless casts an appealing image through his humor and almost childlike loyalty to his old friend, Easy. Beals is a classically ’40s siren, and a host of other players offer vivid support.But the real focus of the film, which never wavers through all the twists and turns of the plot, nor blurs in the welter of period atmosphere, is on Easy and the changes he goes through in pursuit of his mortgage money. To keep his house he has to risk disillusionment with the dream he’s banked on, that of being a horns-°W, ip.v.a . *ei^bprhoolt;j; qfhomeowners.He sees common, everyday racism reach vicious extremes and become hardened into a routine indifference. He uncovers a political system rife with corruption. And perhaps worst of all, he encounters a society in which people dependably lie to one another to get ahead; as he puts it, “In L.A., everybody is in business.”.1He doesn’t come through with his ideals intact, but he does manage to make his compromises palatable. That is the accomplishment on which “Devil in.aBlue Dress” stakes itgreat-est claiip.,.,,. . .
Newspaper Details
Santa Ana Orange County Register
Santa Ana, California, US
Fri, Sep 29, 1995
Page 150
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 20 Oct 2021
Other Publications Near Santa Ana, California
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Santa Ana Orange County Register Evening
