Devil in a Blue Dress. - movie reviews

Christian Century, May 15, 1996 by Leo D. Lefebure

AFTER A HARROWING series of adventures, Ezekiel ("Easy") Rawlins (Denzel Washington) repeats to a friend the advice a gangster had once given him: "Step out your door in the morning, and you're already in trouble. It's just a matter of whether you're mixed up to the top of that trouble or not. That's all."

It is the summer of 1948 in Los Angeles. The U.S. has fought a war to keep the world free, but Easy, an African-American veteran, comes home to discover that his tranquil neighborhood is inextricably linked to a larger world of corrupt power, sexual abuse, racial discrimination and murder. Racial politics firmly controls this "free" society, shaping events from a mayoral election to marriage choices, from employment options to police interrogations. The color line restricts all lives, not only African-Americans but even a rich, white politician who can become mayor but cannot choose his own spouse. "Trouble" reaches from the top levels of society to a quiet neighborhood where children jump rope and families gather on their lawns.

On one level, Devil in a Blue Dress follows a standard Hollywood plot--a virtuous hero stumbles half-wittingly into a corrupt world, is falsely accused of murder, and has to find the true culprit to save both himself and a beautiful woman in danger. A shootout at the end leaves the bad guys dead and the hero victorious. Order and justice have been at least nominally restored, and the hero can live happily ever after, or at least sit and laugh with his friend on his front porch before setting off on his next investigation. The familiar patterns are firmly in place, or so it seems.

What undercuts this confidence is the deft way the movie charts the ripple effects of racial discrimination and questions the very meaning of innocence in such a world. Based on the "Easy Rawlins" novels of Walter Mossley and directed by Carl Franklin, Devil in a Blue Dress confronts us not only with racial injustice but the moral ambiguity of Easy's coming to terms with this world. At the beginning, the hero is relatively naive, without a clue as to how he himself is being used. By the end he learns to use deception and violence and the help of a seasoned criminal to attain his goals.

Easy's seemingly simple assignment to find the missing girlfriend of a politician involves more than he bargained for. The object of the search is the secretive Daphne Morgan (Jennifer Beales), a beautiful, cunning and seductive woman who is tragically caught between her love for a wealthy politician and her biracial Creole ancestry; public disclosure of her identity would deny the man the mayoral election. While Daphne has secrets of her own to hide and has even changed her name to conceal her identity, she also possesses scandalous photographs that would discredit the rival candidate in the mayoral election-photographs that people will kill for.

Easy's investigation leads him unaware to the scene of two murders. While the murder of the first victim, a black woman, could be left unsolved, the second victim is a white man, and so the police need someone to take the rap, guilty or not. As a black man who can be linked to both murder scenes, Easy is the most available scapegoat. The police give him a reprieve: he has until the following morning to solve the crimes himself. Under increasing pressure from both the police and gangsters, he takes to heart the lesson of a gangster that what is important is to be "mixed up" i n trouble all the way to the top. When he meets the heights of power, he finds one mayoral candidate who is a corrupt and dangerous pedophile with a cadre of gangsters at his command and another who proves to be a weak and vacillating lover but, in the end, a valuable protector for Easy himself.

As the going gets too tough for him to handle alone, Easy calls upon the help of a thief and a murderer, his old friend "Mouse" (Don Cheadle), who will save his life more than once. Simply to survive in a world of deception and violence, Easy learns that he too must use deception and violence, at least in moderation. Mouse, who is much more comfortable with violence than Easy, mocks his scruples and provides the essential help that saves him in the end. Justice itself becomes questionable in a world where white policemen routinely beat up black suspects and openly threaten to plant evidence. The practice of law and order looks very different from opposite sides of the color line. To secure justice, Easy has to learn to make false accusations and deadly threats of his own.

Often we do not realize the specific horizon of our own assumptions until we catch a glimpse of the world through someone else's angle of vision. Devil in a Blue Dress, by viewing an American city from the perspective of Easy Rawlins, helps us become more conscious of how racial barriers have appeared to African-Americans. Even though Easy is not deliberately seeking to change the whole system, his repeated assertion of himself calls that system into question.