** this review has no spoilers **
I've always liked science fiction, and I've noticed that many of the best s.f. narratives involve religion, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Battlestar Galactica, and the works of Ursula K. LeGuin. I think the reason this makes a good combination is that religion and science tend to be antithetical, in competition. Just as religion has its prophets, science explores the future through science fiction. The inclusion of its opposite injects dramatic tension into the science fiction genre, and prevents it from being sterile and abstract.
The reason I bring this up is because I find that many of the richest English-language films include themes of race and racism. This makes sense, because the doctrine of white supremacy is stubbornly central to Anglo-American culture. That culture wants everyone to assimilate to its presumed superiority, and when someone can't or won't do so, it creates a dramatic tension that is difficult, if not impossible, to resolve.
For me, it's not so much that these films include racial themes as that all of the other films carefully exclude them. Themes of race enrich works as varied as The Searchers, The Shining, Blade Runner, Jackie Brown, The Sopranos, and (again) Battlestar Galactica.
So you know where I'm coming from when I review this film noir, set in the 1940s, with the twist that the detective is a black man. Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, and Don Cheadle star in Carl Franklin's adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel, which sadly failed at the box office and thus left unfilmed the remainder of Mosley's Easy Rawlins books. If you were a moviegoer in Fall 1995 and didn't go see this movie, shame on you (and me).
Devil in a Blue Dress gives us a black male hero in the late 1940s, without minimizing the racism such a man would confront. This is a film that could've been made decades before if Hollywood existed in a bigotry-free zone; in that sense it's cousin to Far From Heaven, but peppier than that art-house entry. This is an honest film, but it's also smooth, steamy, beautiful, bracing, jazzy and witty.
Aside from my recommendation, I'll only add that there's a very sexy scene in this film, one that deserves to be ranked with those in Body Heat, The Big Easy, and Out of Sight.
I've always liked science fiction, and I've noticed that many of the best s.f. narratives involve religion, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Battlestar Galactica, and the works of Ursula K. LeGuin. I think the reason this makes a good combination is that religion and science tend to be antithetical, in competition. Just as religion has its prophets, science explores the future through science fiction. The inclusion of its opposite injects dramatic tension into the science fiction genre, and prevents it from being sterile and abstract.
The reason I bring this up is because I find that many of the richest English-language films include themes of race and racism. This makes sense, because the doctrine of white supremacy is stubbornly central to Anglo-American culture. That culture wants everyone to assimilate to its presumed superiority, and when someone can't or won't do so, it creates a dramatic tension that is difficult, if not impossible, to resolve.
For me, it's not so much that these films include racial themes as that all of the other films carefully exclude them. Themes of race enrich works as varied as The Searchers, The Shining, Blade Runner, Jackie Brown, The Sopranos, and (again) Battlestar Galactica.
So you know where I'm coming from when I review this film noir, set in the 1940s, with the twist that the detective is a black man. Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, and Don Cheadle star in Carl Franklin's adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel, which sadly failed at the box office and thus left unfilmed the remainder of Mosley's Easy Rawlins books. If you were a moviegoer in Fall 1995 and didn't go see this movie, shame on you (and me).
Devil in a Blue Dress gives us a black male hero in the late 1940s, without minimizing the racism such a man would confront. This is a film that could've been made decades before if Hollywood existed in a bigotry-free zone; in that sense it's cousin to Far From Heaven, but peppier than that art-house entry. This is an honest film, but it's also smooth, steamy, beautiful, bracing, jazzy and witty.
Aside from my recommendation, I'll only add that there's a very sexy scene in this film, one that deserves to be ranked with those in Body Heat, The Big Easy, and Out of Sight.
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