Denzel Washington‘s critically panned $151 million thriller manages to get some detective details right, according to a former homicide investigator, but it also has some key flaws. Washington’s best movies have often seen him in important roles of power and professionalism, such as ex-CIA agent John Creasy in Man on Fire, or as Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth. He’s also known for portraying characters on various sides of the crime world, with one of his most memorable being as drug kingpin Frank Lucas in 2007’s American Gangster.

Washington is also remembered for a number of heroic roles, including Coach Herman Boone in Remember the тιтans and as Troy Maxon in Fences. However, his roles have also led to him portraying more altruistic characters who dish out justice their own way, with one of his most memorable being Robert McCall in The Equalizer trilogy. His diverse acting career makes him a perfect candidate for plenty of different types of movies. One of these films in the detective genre, but, unfortunately, isn’t as well-remembered as his others.

The Bone Collector Surprisingly Gets Some Detective Details Right

The Film Was Critically Panned Upon Release

While Washington has plenty of memorable roles, one that isn’t as well-recalled is his 1999 crime thriller The Bone Collector. Based on Jeffery Deaver’s 1997 book of the same name, the film sees Washington portraying Lincoln Rhyme, a paralyzed forensics expert in New York City. He teams up with patrol officer Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) to catch a serial killer, the search expanding as the film continues. While a financial success, earning $151.5 million against a $48 million budget, the movie holds a 28% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, signaling overwhelmingly negative reviews.

However, speaking with Insider on their series How Real Is It?, former homicide detective Pat Postiglione explains how The Bone Collector gets a good number of details right. Starting at 20:53, the detective explains how investigating every angle of the crime scene and the use of tape lifting for a hair are true to life. However, he critiques the scene for showing Amelia investigating the dark crime scene with just a flashlight, and for having her cut the hand off a victim to get prints on a pair of handcuffs. Check out what Postiglione had to say below:

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 pH๏τograph 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.

What The Bone Collector’s Level Of Accuracy Says About The Crime Thriller

It Still Got Some Details Right Despite Its Critical Reception

The Bone Collector isn’t considered one of the lead actor’s best movies, making its level of accuracy surprising. However, since it pulled many details from Deaver’s original novel, it likely helped bolster the film’s ability to feel accurate to what real criminal investigations are like. Even if it’s not going to be remembered as one of Washington‘s best films, the crime thriller is still considerably important because of how much it managed to get right despite negative reception.

Source: Insider/YouTube