Why Denzel Washington’s Underrated Film Deserves Its Own Franchise

Published in 1990, Mosley’s “Devil in a Blue Dress” plunged readers into a vibrant post-WWII Los Angeles wherein Army veteran Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins (sometimes just “Ease” if you’re intimates) has just been fired from his job at Champion Aircraft. The still young man is plotting out his next move over bourbon at Joppy’s Bar when a white man strolls into the typically all-Black establishment to make Easy a classic noir offer: find a white woman named Daphne Monet. Who’s looking for her and why isn’t it known. He just has to find out which bar she’s calling her home away from home, and a solid payday (on top of the advance he’s already pocketed) will be his.

The racial distinctions are important here because this is the late ’40s, when L.A. was attracting minorities in growing numbers, creating an uneasy, segregated peace in a town viewed by outsiders as a moviemaking dream factory. When the white cops notice Easy snooping around, they bring him in for questioning. When two rival mayoral candidates become involved, Easy is suddenly up to his Jake Gittes in political intrigue. There’s also a very “Chinatown”-esque family component to the mystery as well.

Mosley’s tight prose and ear for dialogue make for pleasurable reading, the kind you can’t put down not because you’re in a rush to finish it, but because you want to stay in that gritty-glamorous world forever. A smart, sexy protagonist and jazzy atmosphere is what Mosley’s selling, and remarkably, it’s what Franklin captures in his film with seemingly little effort.

Of course, Franklin has a supernova of natural charisma in Washington, and, fortunately, the then 40-year-old star was still youthful enough to portray the 20-something Rawlins. He strikes a crackling rapport with every single one of his castmates, but is at his best when bantering with Don Cheadle, who launched his career into the stratosphere (at least among casting agents) as Easy’s old Houston associate Mouse.

It all depends on how Franklin and producers Gary Goetzman and Jesse Beaton would’ve managed Mosley’s series, but it’s hard to imagine them not prioritizing the novels where Mouse causes a vicious ruckus. The character is there to both save Easy from trouble and cause a good deal more of it. Mouse is lightning quick with a pistol, blade, rope or, sorry Joppy, his bare hands; in one of the later books, after he finishes a five-year bid for manslaughter, he starts killing off everyone he suspects of having given him up to the cops. Mouse is the live-wire element of the best Easy books, and Cheadle had a ball playing him (he was still up to revisit the character when I interviewed him in 2004).

There’s so much here for a great filmmaker like Franklin to explore, so why didn’t more people show up at the multiplexes? Possibly because they didn’t know it was there in the first place.

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