Everyone, including the cops, is a suspect when a serial killer stalks the quaint southern town, and nobody lives in peace because the killer is never caught. As the number of bodies rises and the enigma deepens, the lead investigator begins to feel the wrath of his troubled past.
Movie Review
“Crescent City” is the way people refer to New Orleans, Louisiana, and “Crescent City” is also the theme of several fantasy novels which are very well known. But probably I am wrong about them having anything to do with the film “Crescent City,” a complex crime thriller set and filmed in and around Little Rock, Arkansas. The viewer may inquire where the title “Crescent City” originated, why it emerged, and where. You’re out of luck! It certainly is not to imply that it is not there but it would be exceedingly effortless to overlook it in a movie of this scope and this intricate in its construction.
Despite the fact that the most unwieldy and overstuffed plot has been cast by R.J. Collins, he works hard to explore the weaknesses of the inconsequential story, blaming the tension starved movie primarily on the screenplay. But there’s a limit to what even his competent cast members can achieve. The writer, Rich Ronat, tries to integrate new ideas into his screenplay, but ends up overdoing it. This allows Collin to receive more characters, motives and plot devices than he wants and that’s not ideal as per the script’s requirements.
The plot involves the city of Little Rock rocked as a result of three dismembered and headless corpses with mannequins as signatures on the remains left behind. Two deeply flawed Little Rock police detectives are put on the case, Brian Sutter (Terrence Howard), a devoted family man who has a history of a case that self destructed, and his partner, the short-tempered and rude Luke Carson (Esai Morales).
With yet another victim found, their hotheaded Captain who has a check to get cashed (Alec Baldwin) gets Detective Jaclyn Waters (Nicky Whelan) to come in and help. She is at the moment a Tulsa homicide detective originally from Sydney, Australia. Both Brian and Luke aren’t exactly happy with an outsider being part of their pack, but they take orders still. Soon enough the three of them are seen trying to pin down a local pastor (Michael Sirow), who seems to have a few skeletons in his closets, as well as probing a website that aids people in satanic cults find partners and also taking part in an IA investigation about a different matter altogether.
Such encounters alone would suffice for one having a full-fledged plot. But the movie has way too many setups, cover-ups, and betrayals that it doesn’t seem possible for to keep track of them all. And then the film has this secondary story–the writer had no clue who is this story for. One moment we stick to law film study, next two minutes we catch a crime mystery, and then two seasons further down the road is a family drama. And all this time the movie is trying hard not to be a very mediocre crime thriller. Quite frankly, that is too much.
Howard and Morales are indeed fine actors who can shoulder the film and here they do their best. Simultaneously, Little Rock adds a refreshingly new location, but… And yet, “Crescent City” at last collapses from excessive ambition. It feels that each character is hiding something, various motives are vague, and there are too many story elements that do not mesh well together. In the end, so much energy is spent in trying to rein it all that more important elements are left unaddressed. “Crescent City” has recently been released on VOD.
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