Phillip Noyce's 1999 serial killer thriller "The Bone Collector" wasn't the typical movie that Denzel Washington usually chose in the 1990s. Sure, one could argue that he made "Fallen" (another serial killer flick) just a year earlier, but in Gregory Hoblit's feature, he was an able-bodied and tough homicide detective calling the shots. It was the type of role that greatly suited his strengths and heroic screen presence. Meanwhile, in "The Bone Collector," he played a bedridden quadriplegic forensic
analyst with a very limited set of skills. He had little to no leeway to rely on his emblematic swagger or physical mannerisms because he simply couldn't move his body apart from his head. Not as if that was a problem for Denzel — we damn well know by now how vast and impressive his range is — but the part provided him an unusual challenge that he embraced and made the most out of.
At the time, critics lambasted the movie for its contrived and ad hoc screenplay that was filled with too many weak plot points and implausible twists, but they also pointed out that Washington's and Angelina Jolie's lead performances were top-notch. Of course, compared to the best of the genre in that period, like Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" or David Fincher's masterpiece, "Seven," Noyce's film was no match and clearly derivative of those classics. But it's hard to argue that the movie scratched that itch many of us felt back then, hungry for more vicious and haunting serial killer pictures led by some of the best actors in the game. Washington was unequivocally among them, and looking back on it with a few years of distance, he said he was proud and satisfied with how the film turned out.
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Washington Praised The Bone Collector For Its Claustrophobic And Eerie Atmosphere
Perhaps my nostalgia toward dark and edgy late '90s and early '00s crime flicks skews my judgment a little, but I remember "The Bone Collector" as a solid atmospheric thriller that Denzel elevated with his inimitable and stupendous charisma. Not to mention that it showed us Angelina Jolie in a vastly different light than how we saw her before; she really just started getting recognition after playing the gorgeous and deeply troubled supermodel Gia Carangi in the 1998 biopic, "Gia." Today, after watching numerous painstaking TV shows, movies, and true crime documentaries about serial killers — "Mindhunter," "Zodiac," "John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise," etc. — I'm sure "The Bone Collector" feels like a drop in the ocean. But back then, the film hit different. Its box office performance spoke for itself: $151 million worldwide on a $73 million budget. But besides all that, even Denzel talked about it positively in a 2004 interview with Total Film. He said:
"I thought it was a very cerebral thriller and a different challenge as an actor. I had made films like 'Ricochet' and 'The Pelican Brief' in the past, but I think 'The Bone Collector' was a lot scarier and more sinister than the other two. When I first saw the film myself, I was scared to death a few times. I think Phillip Noyce [the director] did an incredible job of creating a claustrophobic and haunting atmosphere."
Maybe I'm in the minority, but that's exactly how I felt about "The Bone Collector" when I first watched it at a young and impressionable age. Perhaps the time has come for a rewatch.
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