The Bone Collector
Feeling every bit the 90s movie it is, The Bone Collector throws Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie together in a crime thriller based on Jeffery Deaver's novel. Washington stars as brilliant, but suicidal, quadriplegic homicide detective Lincoln Rhyme who sees wasted potential in Officer Amelia Donaghy (Jolie) who takes the kind of initiative he, but not her superiors, appreciate in preserving a crime scene. Not initially pleased with her reassignment, Amelia works as Rhyme's legs in the field helping to track down a serial killer leaving obscure clues and removing bones from his victims.
The script is what it is, but Jolie and Washington do what they can to add some depth to the characters. The throughline of the film is Amelia growing to understand and appreciate her new mentor's methods who continues to push her far outside her comfort zone (leading to more than one confrontation between them). The reveal of the killer, and fight between our Bone Collector and a quadriplegic is pretty badly botched. The tease of a romantic flirtation between our two leads also seems to come out of nowhere.
The pairing of Washington and Jolie doesn't spark the same magic of the actor's pairing with Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief just a few years prior (using the same 90s premise of pairing a well-known male and female lead together in every type of genre imaginable). However, any failings have more to do with the quality of the film's script than the performances its stars. Luis Guzmán, Michael Rooker, Queen Latifah, and Ed O'Neill also appear in supporting roles as those helping, or hindering, the investigation, but The Bone Collector isn't going to be in the first sentence of anyone's biography. Ultimately the film just doesn't quite work as anything more than a throwaway thriller, but there are some interesting moments along the way.
- Title: The Bone Collector
- IMDb: link
