Picking Nits
The near-assault rescue and the wallet Jake carries around are flimsy; Alonzo's intent to frame Jake for Roger's murder only becomes clear after the three wise men lunch; Alonzo stays after getting $4 million; the wise men and Russians corruption plot is another movie; the Vegas killing is never shown; Denzel kept replaying the Alonzo persona like Pacino after Scent of a Woman
In the discussion (5)
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- The movie hinges on a weird near-assault scene in which Jake, on PCP, sees something, saves a girl from two crackheads and randomly picks up a wallet he then carries around until it saves his life; the premise that Alonzo is breaking in a kid he will frame for Roger's murder is flimsy and only becomes clear after the lunch with the three wise men.
- Alonzo gets his hands on $4 million and stays rather than leaving the country; the defense that he has five kids is waved off, he loves the streets and cannot get away from them, and there are a million why-are-you-doing-that moments that only the compelling performances carry.
- The police corruption, the three wise men and the Russians are another movie the film only dips into; it is rewatchable because at any 17-minute interval a Denzel-Hawke scene is about to start, the five most rewatchable scenes staggered roughly every 20 minutes.
- Not seeing what happened in Vegas with Alonzo killing the Russian is a nit, since it is such a big part of the movie; one host would drop the first five minutes with Hawke and his wife and open with a Vegas prelude, then the credits.
- A tiny bit of Scent of a Woman is in this: Denzel stumbled on a new character with King Kong and then became that guy in about seven more movies, the way Pacino became the Scent of a Woman guy over and over.