01
Motherless Brooklyn
Why this pick
Like Devil in a Blue Dress, this is a richly textured period detective story where an outsider’s dogged investigation exposes political power and entrenched corruption.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1995 1h 42m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Devil in a Blue Dress
CrimeThrillerDrama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Devil in a Blue Dress, try these.
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02
The Long Goodbye
Why this pick
A sly, sun-bleached Los Angeles noir centered on a principled private eye navigating wealthy, evasive people and a mystery that keeps shifting beneath him.
03
A Rage in Harlem
Why this pick
Bill Duke brings vivid Black-community texture and noir-adjacent danger to this stylized period crime tale, with humor and atmosphere balancing its criminal entanglements.
04
One False Move
Why this pick
Carl Franklin again combines noir tension with sharp class and racial observation; its measured pursuit and morally complicated characters carry the same adult seriousness.
05
The Little Things
Why this pick
For another Denzel Washington-led Los Angeles investigation, this offers a patient, shadowy procedural with compromised investigators and an emphasis on mounting psychological unease.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In the summer of 1948, Easy Rawlins is recently laid off from his job at Champion Aircraft, and needs money urgently to pay his mortgage. Easy's friend Joppy, who runs a bar, introduces him to a white man named DeWitt Albright. Albright is looking for someone to help him find a missing white woman, Daphne Monet, assumed to be hiding somewhere in the African American community; he also learns she is the girlfriend of wealthy Todd Carter, who was the favorite in the Los Angeles mayoral race before dropping out. Albright, who says Carter dropped out because he couldn't find Daphne, offers Rawlins $100 ($ today) to take the job. Easy accepts but is immediately suspicious. Daphne is known to spend time in the juke joints along Central Avenue (Los Angeles) and Easy begins his search at an illegal club on 89th and Central.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Denzel Washington
Ezekiel 'Easy' Rawlins
Terry Kinney
Todd Carter
Mel Winkler
Joppy
L. Scott Caldwell
Hattie Parsons
Tom Sizemore
DeWitt Albright
Jennifer Beals
Daphne Monet
Don Cheadle
Mouse Alexander
Maury Chaykin
Matthew Terell