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Un-Lost on DVD: The Mighty Quinn (1989) |
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Friday, 25 August 2006 |
By D. W. O'Dell
 Denzel Washington, Robert Townsend, Mimi Rogers
The Mighty Quinn is the film that should have made Denzel Washington a movie star. It wasn’t, but it should have been. He won an Oscar for his next movie, Glory, and his career was off to the races. The Mighty Quinn grossed a little over $4.5 million and got caught in the backwash.
Washington plays Xavier Quinn, the FBI-trained Chief of Police on a Caribbean island that is never named but looks a lot like Jamaica. His boyhood friend, Maubee (Robert Townsend), is a one-man crime wave, but in a good way. Maubee is not a criminal but a rascal, someone who embraced irresponsibility the same way that Quinn did the opposite. Quinn tries to maintain professional discipline among his officers, but the island has a lot of temptations.
One day a tourist is killed and suspicion falls on Maubee. The Governor, worried about the tourist trade, declares Maubee to be the killer. Quinn’s wife (the gorgeous Sheryl Lee Ralph) isn’t so sure; as she points out to Quinn that Maubee is a lover, not a killer. The look on Quinn’s face suggests he wonders exactly how his wife came upon that appraisal, but Quinn has distractions of his own - from a flirtatious island woman to the beautiful wife (Mimi Rogers) of one of the richest men on the island.
Island culture becomes a character in the film. Quinn investigates the murder with few resources, because who needs a crime lab in a place where half the population is stoned or drunk most of the time? Reggae music is ubiquitous on the soundtrack (of course there‘s a nice cover of Manfred Mann‘s song, The Mighty Quinn, with the lyrics changed to refer to Washington’s character and not an Eskimo), and a voodoo practitioner eventually figures in the mix. However, ultimately the case comes down to outsiders, most notably a “tourist” (played by the always reliable M. Emmett Walsh) who turns out to have an agenda that does not include working on his tan.
Washington does well in a role that requires him to be part action hero, part sex symbol, part dramatic actor, part comedian, and even a singer. Yes, how many times has Denzel Washington sung in a movie? Not in Training Day, if I recall. Yet in this movie Denzel sits down at a piano and belts out some boogie-woogie blues.
The plot ends up revolving around some $10,000 bills (I don’t mean $10,000 in small bills--I mean a suitcase of $10,000 bill notes). But the plot is secondary to the joys of watching Denzel Washington. Prior to this film he had starred on TV (in St. Elsewhere), and in bad comedies like Carbon Copy, and had relatively small parts in films like Cry Freedom and A Soldier’s Story. This was his first star vehicle, and his charisma fills the screen.
It is also an excellent vehicle for Sheryl Lee Ralph, who went on to do mainly television work, most notably as a regular on Moesha. Here she is a match for Washington, playing a woman who clearly is a challenge for Quinn but is beautiful enough to be worth the bother. The Mighty Quinn is also the cinematic high water mark for Robert Townsend as an actor, whose career never really took off after Hollywood Shuffle.
The Mighty Quinn is as close to film noir as you can get in a film set in the Caribbean, with its bright sun, sandy beaches, and colorful clothing. The ending teeters on silly, but thanks to the talented cast you focus on the characters and not the machinations. It’s the next best thing to a vacation in the tropics. |
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