Fans of Washington should watch this, but really anyone who likes film noir will approve. Its a classic detective novel, but has layers of story beneath it that youll love from the beginning. One lick of strawberry-blond hair escaped the band of his hat.

His skin was smooth and pale with just a few freckles. It's not just that he was white but he wore an off-white linen suit and shirt with a Panama straw hat and bone shoes over flashing white silk socks. He's aided by a very good supporting cast, including Beals and Tom Sizemore (playing a heavy, surprise surprise!). I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy's bar. Washington's aces, of course, as usual makes you wonder if he'll do any more adaptations of Walter Mosley books starring Easy Rawlins. All the sights and sounds are there, and if you concentrate real hard you can even detect the smells, too.

The atmosphere is a major asset here director Carl Franklin has done a magnificent job not only of recreating the Los Angeles of the late forties but also of showing the story from the black perspective, a rarity in film. But, of course, there's more to this plot than just that, or else it'd be a mighty short film. Enter Easy, who with his connections can get into the club and find the girl. Seems someone wants him to find a mysterious white lady in a blue dress (Jennifer Beals)who's thought to have been seen in a blacks-only club. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs. Denzel Washington plays Easy Rawlins, a down-on-his-luck sometime machinist, sometime detective in late-1940's L.A. In Los Angeles, during the year 1948, Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant.

Devil in a blue dress book review