Earnest And Misguided

Rating: 5/10 (28 April 2002)

Denzel Washington plays against type effectively--he's evil--but in the end this is just another in Warner Brothers' long-standing tradition of earnest socially conscious dramas; the problem is that rather than addressing social ills, it just ends up patronizing its target audience, namely urban minority moviegoers, by delivering the notion, through a series of absurd coincidences, that street justice is more effective than law enforcement. Washington is relaxed and entertaining as a corrupt undercover cop who shows his new partner (Ethan Hawke, way out of his league) the ropes in south central L.A. but he plays into the conceits set up by screenwriter David Ayer (he wrote the slick `The Fast And The Furious') and in the end Washington's in cahoots with the film's stodgy finger-wagging, becoming little more than a stick figure. The director is the talented Antoine Fuqua (`The Replacement Killers') but this time he's reined in his talent for flashy color-driven visuals for the usual cloudy, bleached-out images we've come to expect when the subject is down-and-dirty L.A. Special note should be made of the cameo of singer/songwriter Macy Gray: she makes the most of her brief appearance, using unsteady hand movements and a fair amount of sass to create a vivid portrayal of a woman who knows she's being used by the police and who has no compunction about letting her feelings show--she has the best moment in the film and you end up wanting more.