Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

One thing I have often asked myself while watching film noirs is why aren't there any black people? The cool black person should have played well with the white audiences, even back in those incredibly racist '40's. Maybe not as the lead, but having more black characters would have lent itself to the noir style.

Devil in a Blue Dress however, is so similar to the way a "black guy" noir would have played that I can see why they weren't made. Maybe the message about racism wouldn't have been as heavy-handed as it was in this 1990's film, but no doubt it would have been there. It isn't that message which I disliked, it was more the way it was presented.

Devil in a Blue Dress is set in 1948 L.A., and follows the honest, hard-working black man who is dumped on by the whites, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel Washington, in a role which he so often plays). Out of luck, and employment, he takes a job from a detective DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore), who originally says he is employed by mayoral candidate Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), but turns out to be far more sinister. He is employed to find the mayoral candidate's former lover, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals) who happens to sympathise and hang out with black people at illegal nightclubs.

Easy then tracks down a friend of hers, Coretta James (Lisa Nicole Carson), at an illegal black nightclub. He goes to her house and sleeps with her, while finding out a fake address for Daphne. Coretta turns out to be dead the next morning, putting detectives Mason and Miller (John Roselius and Beau Starr) on his tail. To help him find and help Daphne once he realises who DeWitt really is (a criminal), He brings in gun-toting badass Mouse Alexander (Don Cheadle) to help him find her.

The movie oozes with class and style. The cinematography is very impressive, and more than suitably in the style, even though it is in colour. The music is suitable, with a very nice rendition of "'Round Midnight" during a montage as well as a generally jazzy score. Denzel Washington has the sound of a typical gumshoe down, and the voice-over is also quite good. Don Cheadle is electrifying as Mouse Alexander, and Sizemore is menacing as well.

The issue is the predictable story. Most neo-noirs try to get a story which is original and fresh, and put it over the classic noir backdrop. This story is quite uninspired by those standards, and by regular noir standards. The plot is twisty, but the resolution only really serves to hammer in the hammy message of tolerance. The message is poorly handled throughout acutally, with some clumsy scenes thrown in there to try to ingratiate the viewer with the plight of the blacks in the '40's. The third act drags a little as well.

Overall it is pretty good neo-noir, oozing with style as well as giving viewers the first noirish black lead since Shaft, though Shaft is a blacksploitation flick. The story is predictable, but most noir stories are. In the end it is very solid, but it lacks the skill of neo-noirs like "Chinatown", "Blue Velvet" and "L.A. Confidential."

3.5/5, good but could have been better without such a heavy-handed message obscuring the already thin plot.

I'm not Harry Jenson. (2009)

New Zealanders have a certain inherent innovativeness about us. We always look for cheaper solutions to complex problems. We often cobble together these solutions with little more than some no.8 wire, and a can-do attitude. We are also beset by small country syndrome, where we often strive to be the best at what we do to prove to others that we aren't just some speck on the map. These two qualities have led New Zealanders to punch well above their weight in many things, including sport and economics.

They also aid our film industry, which is virtually non-existent. Outside of the very few New Zealand Film Commission grants for film funding, there is no other underlying structure except for Peter Jackson's Wellywood, which is primarily geared towards more expensive US productions. This means that New Zealand directors tend to cobble together films on a shoe-string budget, often improvising solutions to staging and technical faults.

I'm not Harry Jenson is a fantastic example of what New Zealand film-makers are capable of achieving on a low budget. Written, Directed and Edited by James Napier, this is a professional-looking production through and through, suggesting the tremendous amount of time that he, and many others, would have put into this movie to make it this good.

The film follows crime novelist Stanley (Gareth Reeves), who wrote a very successful novel under the pseudonym Mike White. He is struggling to write his next book, about serial killer Harry Jenson, who killed 37 people. On the advice of his agent he goes on a trek in the New Zealand woods, with strangers Marissa (Jinny Lee Story), Jon (Ben Mitchell), Bill (Ian Mune), Margaret (Ilona Rodgers), Rick (Cameron Rhodes), Kevin (Tom Hern), Anna (Rachel Blampied). They are led by tour guide Colby ( Renato Bartolomei.)

The first day is all fun and games, but on the second morning they awake to find Jon murdered. This drives a stake through the group as they grow more and more suspicious of each other, eventually settling on Stanley as the killer after another person turns up dead. We follow from Stanley's perspective, often given insights about him via stories told to others.

The story is told with a mixture of present thriller techniques, combined with some Hitchcockian ones as well. The twists at the end are very good, with some great misdirection throughout the film building to them, which throw you off-guard. I will not spoil them here, in case others (Patrick) want to watch this movie.

The film is wonderfully shot by DP Rhys Duncan, with a great colour scheme and some very sophisticated camera work, including some dazzling helicopter shots of the woods. The camera is very good at capturing little details in people's faces and looks very clear over-all. There are a couple of minor shaky-cam issues, but given the logistics of mounting a camera in some of these situations they are easy to overlook.

The editing is mostly pretty slick as well, particularly in some of the transitions between Stanley's thoughts and what is actually happening. The shots are given plenty of time to linger, and the pace seldom feels rushed and events unfold in plenty of time.The acting was good as well, with brilliant performances from Gareth Reeves and Renato Bartolomei, and solid work from the others.

As a young aspiring film-maker it is very heartening to see that such a professional, polished thriller can be achieved in New Zealand on a low budget. There are many great New Zealand comedies, and a few great dramas, but genre films are rarely made by New Zealanders successfully, and this Hitchcockian thriller is in that respect a great achievement.

my rating is a 4/5, a very good film.