Denzel Washington has made a name for himself through powerful, memorable performances, often playing characters imbued with authority and professionalism. Works like Man on Fire, where he embodies ex-CIA agent John Creasy, and The Tragedy of Macbeth, in which he portrays the titular character, highlight his formidable talent. Furthermore, Washington’s extensive filmography includes portrayals of various criminal archetypes, most notably as drug lord Frank Lucas in American Gangster.
In addition to these roles, Washington has excelled in heroic portrayals, such as Coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans and Troy Maxon in Fences. His versatility enables him to tackle diverse movie genres, including detective films, though not all his cinematic ventures have achieved critical acclaim. One such film, The Bone Collector, released in 1999, has largely faded from public memory despite its remarkable box office performance.
The Bone Collector: A Mixed Bag of Detective Realism
A Critical Response to the Film
The Bone Collector, adapted from Jeffery Deaver’s 1997 novel, showcases Washington as Lincoln Rhyme, a forensic expert left paralyzed due to an accident. He partners with patrol officer Amelia Donaghy, played by Angelina Jolie, to pursue a serial killer through the grimmer streets of New York City. While the film proved financially successful, accumulating approximately $151.5 million against its $48 million budget, it received a dismal 28% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reflecting widespread criticism.
Insights from former homicide detective Pat Postiglione shed light on the film’s attention to certain authentic investigative procedures. In an interview on Insider’s series How Real Is It?, he touches on the accuracy of some investigative techniques depicted in the movie, despite its glaring flaws. Starting at 20:53, he comments on phenomena like tape lifting for hair samples, highlighting where the film strays from realistic portrayals.
Normally when you’re in a low-light environment like this one was, you would bring in more lights. You don’t want to miss a single thing. Big spotlights. And they would make the place look like daylight.
That’s very accurate, because we’ve had cases where the victim is killed, for example, here, and we have cast-off blood on the ceiling. You can tell by the cast-off by the direction of the cast-off on the ceiling or on the wall whether the victim was hit with a left hand or with a right hand. A lot of people don’t realize that, but if you’re hitting someone with a left hand, their blood is going to come on the ceiling and make an arc a certain way. So you’re going to be able to look at the ceiling and say, you’re dealing with a left-handed person.
Typically, the tape lifting will be done on the crime scene. Well, tape lifting is taking a piece of tape and lifting an item, whatever it is, fingerprint or whatever the item is, in this case I think it was a hair, and you would put it on the tape, and you would lift it off the tape, and then you’d preserve that tape. You’d put it in the jar, and you’d preserve it down the road, DNA analysis, match it to somebody else potentially, or maybe even help identify the victim, or whatever the case may be. You want to keep that hair separate. You photograph it the way it is, but you’re going to know that at one point they were together.
The collecting of the handcuffs by cutting off the hands would probably not happen. Sometimes you may have to cut the cuffs off for fingerprints or potential DNA on there not belonging to the victim, but belonging to the suspect. You would typically take the body from the scene and take the body to the medical examiner’s office where it’s a sanitized area. Plenty of light and plenty of time to do what you need to do versus doing it in the mud. Well, we’ve had situations where we’ve had the victim with rope around the neck, for example. And we would have to take that, and we want to preserve the knot. So you don’t undo the knot. You cut the rope off in the back of the neck and you take it off. So now we, we got the knot preserved in the event something else happens and we have a similar knot. Same thing with handcuffs. If you don’t have a key, there’s no way to unlock the handcuffs. They would probably just cut the handcuffs off and then go through the process to analyze the handcuffs. We’re looking for DNA, we’re looking for fingerprints, we’re looking for anything that belonged, might belong to the suspect.
I would rate this around a six.
Insights into The Bone Collector’s Accuracy and Its Implications
Surprising Accuracy Amidst Criticism
Despite its lukewarm reception, The Bone Collector surprisingly captures numerous realistic elements related to crime investigation. Drawing from Deaver’s original work likely contributed to its accuracy, reflecting real-world procedural authenticity. While it may not earn a spot among Washington’s most prestigious films, its significance lies in the accurate details it presents about the workings of criminal investigations.
The story marks the beginning of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series, with the latest installment, The Watchmaker’s Hand, released in 2023.
Source: Insider/YouTube
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