Eleştirmen yorumları

Both in plot and in style a subversion of classic Hollywood conventions, DEVIL flinches from nothing, stripping the dignity and malevolent grace away from film noir, showing the racism and depraved indifference to life that allowed for the existence of grand, clean narratives of Philip Marlowes and Sam Spades, sweeping the streets clean and finding moral high ground and romance all at the same time.

Given Washington’s well-established gift for playing truculent dudes and firebrands and Cheadle’s tendency to play warmer, more thoughtful figures, if Devil in a Blue Dress had been made a few years later it would be easy to imagine the two actors swapping roles. But as long as Cheadle’s on screen he provides a brilliant source of psychopathic charisma.

Franklin sometimes avails himself of voiceover short cuts in order to hit all of Mosley's plot twists, but arriving at the individual scenes of this floating crap game he settles in to linger on the constant process of sizing up and cutting down, generous to his performers but never overindulgent... Washington is at his most sanguine and charismatic, and Don Cheadle gets a star-making supporting bit, twinkling with childish malice every time he flashes his gold incisors.

There's a great tragedy to the film, one that has nothing to do with the mass corruption that surrounds the characters and everything to do with the far more desperate battle for simple identity.