Relentlessly mediocre script and inadequate direction wastes decent performances from the cast. The director John Lee Hancock wrote the
script nearly three decades earlier (which is why the setting is the
'90s). There's just not a complete story here.

Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a deputy in a northern California
county, formerly of Los Angeles County Sheriff homicide. He is sent to
L.A. county to retrieve evidence that must be in court in a few hours
but he cannot possibly bring back. Like Clint Eastwood in Coogan's
Bluff, he ends up staying in L.A. county because PLOT even though, it
turns out, the evidence wasn't needed any more.

Joe left homicide due to absurdly melodramatic events as relayed by his
former boss Carl Farris (Terry Kinney, whom I didn't recognize at
first), who actually isn't aware that Joe himself shot one of the
victims he was trying to save.

Joe ends up helping with homicides for Mr. Robot (despite the warning
from Farris) after his former partner Rizoli (Chris Bauer) heaps praise
on him but also assisted in the cover up. And of course the fores9c
pathologist on the new homicides is the same one who covered up the
evidence of Joe's accidental shooting of the victim.

How can having Joe help possibly go wrong?

When Joe looks into who repaired a refrigerator in the apartment of one
of the victims that never actually got fixed, he encounters Albert
Sparma (Jared Leto) in the role of Villain Who Taunts Detectives. Joe, succumbing to the taunting and blowing up at the suspect (I have no idea
if we're supposed to think this is strategy), tells Mr. Robot tht he
just knows if he can illegally search Sparma's home, he'll find
evidence. Because REASONS, Mr. Robot goes along with it.

It's "the little things" that are going to trip up Sparma. Well, a lousy
movie continues to go downhill. The big confrontation takes place in the
dark. It's between Mr. Robot and Sparma, while Joe spends this portion
of the movie aimlessly driving around in the dark.

There never actually was evidence against Sparma. We do know that he
likes fucking with detectives, having falsely confessed to a murder he
had no involvement in.

Natalie Morales is in this in a small part that made no impression.

Every decent actor in the movie is wasted. Since Hancock couldn't bother
to finish the script in three decades, he just should have burned it.

One of those movies that wouldn't have found an audience without COVID
shutting down movie theaters.

Even Carbon Copy had some merit in the drama; the comedy largely failed.
I'd say this was Denzel's worst movie.

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