Ponderous Crescent City is a Sexless Erotic Thriller
A serial killer is stalking the streets of Crescent City, decapitating victims and leaving cryptically grizzly clues for veteran detectives Brian Sutter (Terrence Howard) and Luke Carson (Esai Morales) to decipher. With the public outcry for justice reaching a fever pitch, Captain Howell (Alec Baldwin) adds a third person to the team, Detective Jaclyn Waters (Nicky Whelan). But she’s not on hand to only add her expertise to the investigation. Waters is also an Internal Affairs investigator, and she’s fairly certain Sutter and Carson have some big skeletons in their closets they’ve been working overtime to conceal.
Crescent City is more like 2000’s The Watcher than it is 1995’s Se7en, more reminiscent of 1993’s Sliver than it is 1992’s Basic Instinct. It’s a half-baked sleazy and steamy thriller that never has the guts to be particularly sleazy and is too puritanical about sex to be considered steamy. There’s more heat generated by a random episode from an early season of C.S.I. or Law & Order than anything cooked up here. The mystery at the heart of all this nonsense is both goofily convoluted and insultingly obvious. None of this is good news.
Are there any positives? Sure. Composer Josh Atchley provides a rather nice, suitably unfussy score. Editor Eric Potter (Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) keeps the pace moving, doesn’t overcut the action, and keeps things from devolving into visual incoherence. While far from his best work, Howard gives way more of himself to the material than the picture deserves. He gives an emotionally charged performance that ponders questions of faith, familial responsibility, and public accountability that I wish the film had handled with more direct specificity.
I wish I could come up with a few more nice things to say about the production, but sadly that’s pretty much it. Even though a lot is going on (Vindictive killer using social media and dating apps to hunt for victims! Sutter and Carson dealing with the moral and psychological repercussions of a late-night drug bust gone bad! Sutter and Waters engaging in an affair! Sutter concealing said affair from his wife and child! Sutter having a crisis of faith! Sutter being framed for the beheadings!), precious little adds up to anything worthwhile (and even less of it entertains).
Morales deserves better. A terrific talent who has never gotten his due respect over the decades (just watch him cook in everything from Bad Boys to La Bamba, My Family to Gun Hill Road), the one-two punch of Master Gardener and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One had him on the cusp of a career resurgence. But Morales is ill-utilized as Carson. His character is never allowed to evolve and less freedom to generate an emotional connection with the audience. The actor does his best, but Carson is a frenetically cartoonish mishmash of ideas that never coalesce into anything interesting. This makes all of the third-act twists and turns meaningless.
But all of that is oceans better than how the relationship between Sutter and Waters is handled. Not only do Howard and Whelan have zero chemistry, there is even less erotic heat passing between either of them when the clothes come off and the pair hit the sheets. It’s as if the film is terrified of sex, like director RJ Collins watched hot-blooded neo-noirs like Body Heat, The Big Easy, Sea of Love, Red Rock West, and the aforementioned Basic Instinct, was inspired by all of them, and yet still didn’t have any idea how to emulate their sweaty majesty. There’s more passion in an installment of the Red Shoes Diaries, and those went directly to Showtime in the 1990s.
When events finally do twist back to the murder plot that screenwriter Rich Ronat has poured as his narrative’s foundation, there’s no surprise whatsoever as it pertains to the killer’s identity. That’s okay because, as we’re dealing with a villain who cuts off their victims’ heads and uses creepy mannequin parts as decorative features, the gore factor must be pretty high. Except that’s not the case, either. For all the blood and guts this is annoyingly tame stuff, so even as a piece of pulp exploitation, this whodunnit comes up woefully short.
There’s not much else to add. I felt like watching Crescent City was a waste of my time, and as far as I’m concerned that says it all.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
