After showing promise with One False Move, director Carl Franklin hits the jackpot here. From start to finish there's not one false move in this film noir: Franklin has reproduced a pulp fiction flick of the post-war years to perfection. And in Denzel Washington he finds the ideal actor to play 'Easy' Rawlins, a black war hero who has bought his own home but finds his lifestyle on the line when he loses his job. An ex-boxer who runs a bar Easy frequents puts him in touch with blue-jowled, shady-looking Albright who offers Easy $100 to locate the vanished girlfriend of a politician. That's all - but that's not all, of course, as Easy's first contact ends up dead the same night he sees her. The plot, though difficult to penetrate, is simple enough, and its peripheral characters all amazingly well-drawn, notably Mouse, a trigger-happy friend of Easy's from out of town, called in to help our increasingly desperate and angry hero.

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