Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon (Denzel Washington), a Bakersfield cop with a spiritual side (hence the nickname) and a tainted past as an L.A. Detective, is assigned a return trip to his roots to pick up a pair of blood-stained boots. But rather than retrieving the evidentiary material, all Deke seems able to collect are dirty glances from his former colleagues. A web of red tape keeps him in town for the night. Why take in a show when Deke can accompany dapper-dressed Det. Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek, casting more side-eyed glances than a guilty puppy), a hotshot holy roller with a bright future ahead, on a crime scene investigation? Wouldn’t you know it, the case bears eerie similarities to the still-unsolved serial murders responsible for the bad blood between Deke and the department. Happily, Deke is a corpse whisperer of sorts; it’s a creepy side to his personality that allows him to address the dead or crack cases by spending quality time in the space once occupied by their killer. John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, The Founder) told Deadline that he wrote the screenplay in 1993 with Spielberg in mind, but the director, hot off the success of Schindler’s List, “felt it was too dark for him.” The script passed through several hands before Hancock finally decided to take his position behind the camera. What was once deemed dark is now the stuff of network police procedurals. And considering how little the early ‘90s milieu comes into play (phone booths were bountiful), it might have behooved Hancock to move things forward into the new millennium. The one fresh wrinkle is Jared Leto’s hollow-eyed, mangy-haired, and perpetually wise-cracking turn as the suspected serial killer. The rest is rote. (2021) — Scott Marks
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