Mighty Quinn, The

If you want to see a young Denzel Washington play piano and sing the Dylan song that provides its title then The Mighty Quinn is the film for you. If you’re a reggae fan or just looking to chill for a while it will have general ganja lifestyle appeal.

Washington plays Xavier Quinn, the popular police chief on an unnamed island not unlike Jamaica who gets called in after a wealthy developer is found murdered and decapitated. Everything points to the Chief's best friend, Maubee, a no-account Rastafarian (Robert Townsend), but Xavier, needless to say, thinks matters are not so simple.

Although spun as an action thriller as the opening credits, underscored with a nifty reggae song “Natty Dreadlocks”, indicates, the aim is really just to have fun. This is largely achieved with the usual underpinnings of the genre, sex and death, at its core but instead of dark, rain-swept streets, corruption in high places and a taciturn gumshoe we get a colour-saturated palette, funky music, sexy women and a hero immaculately attired in white. M. Emmet Walsh plays one of his many similar screen incarnations as a genially ruthless hit-man whilst Mimi Rogers is the sexually-frustrated wife of the island’s governor  (James Fox in another stock incarnation),.

Washington was yet to hit the big-time with his Oscar-winning role in Glory released later that year but his easy-going charm and irresistible good looks are more than sufficient sufficient for what is a modest but likeable divertissement. 

FYI: Then Scientologist Rogers’ brief marriage to Tom Cruise was winding up around this time. Apparently an inter-racial love scene between her and Washington was (probably ill-advisedly, at least from a box-office point of view) excised from the final cut. 

 

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