August 24, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by RJ Collins
Culture Representation: Taking place in Little Rock, Arkansas, the dramatic film “Crescent City” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans and Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two macho cops reluctantly work with a new female partner in their hunt to find a serial killer who beheads the murder victims.
Culture Audience: “Crescent City” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and enjoy watching low-quality murder mysteries.
Trashy and idiotic, “Crescent City” is an embarrassment to crime dramas. This awful and stupid movie is filled with substandard performances in a poorly written story about police on the hunt for a serial killer. A plot twist at the end is laughably bad.
Directed by RJ Collins and written by Rich Ronat, “Crescent City” is an example of lazy filmmaking combined with cast members who mostly look like they don’t really want to be there but they need the money. The entire story is creatively bankrupt and just plods along with gruesome discoveries of beheaded corpses in between the movie’s tawdry scenes where people spew unrealistic and flat-sounding dialogue.
“Crescent City” takes place in the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which had a population of about 202,000 people, as of the 2022 census. (“Crescent City” was filmed on location in Arkansas, which is probably the most authentic-looking thing about the movie.) What’s weird and off-kilter about the marketing of “Crescent City” is that this description is in the movie’s synopsis: “When a small Southern town is terrorized by a serial killer everyone becomes a suspect … including the police.”
Since when is a city with a population of about 202,000 people considered a “small town”? It’s almost as if the studio’s marketing people couldn’t even bear to watch this movie and decided any old generic synopsis would do. For anyone who has the misfortune of watching this tacky film, “Crescent City” is just a pile-on of mindless scenes and unappealing characters.
The beginning of “Crescent City” shows a TV news report that there have been three murders in Little Rock in two months. It’s later revealed that the police suspect the same person is causing the murders because all of the victims are found decapitated with a mannequin’s head placed near each dead body. This murderer has been targeting men and women between the ages of 20 and 40.
One of these murders is shown near the beginning of the film. An unidentified man in his 30s (played by David Lipper) is shown standing near a house’s swimming pool. He appears to be in a stupor from drugs and/or alcohol. A mystery woman is seen emerging from the pool. She walks up behind the man and then slits his throat. It’s revealed at the end of the movie who this person is.
The lead investigator in the Little Rock Police Department is Brian Sutter (played by Terrence Howard), who seems to be an upstanding family man, but he’s got some disturbing secrets. The first time that Brian is seen in the movie, he’s sitting in a church pew with his wife Elena (played by Reema Sampat) and their daughter Mila (played by Madonna Akhtar), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Brian is unnerved during the church service because he keeps having flashback visions to a drug bust that went terribly wrong.
The information about this drug bust gradually comes out during the movie, until the full truth is revealed. It’s enough to say in this review that a known drug addict/drug dealer in the area named Mrs. Crawford was being raided in her trailer park home for possession of meth and cocaine. She had a 17-year-old son named Benjamin Harrison, who was shot to death during this drug bust.
Brian’s cop partner is Luke Carson (played by Esai Morales), a misogynist who is loyal to Brian and has some serious anger issues. The boss of Brian and Luke is Captain Howell (played by Alec Baldwin), who is as cliché as cliché can be. Captain Howell’s role in the movie consists mostly of sitting at a desk and giving orders.
One day, Brian is in a public restroom when he sees a graffiti message written on a wall: “For sexual salvation Secrets666.com.” Brian tries to wipe off the graffiti until a janitor named Gopal Sharma (played by Anjul Nigam) enters the room and tells Brian that he will remove the graffiti because it’s his job. This scene is so awkwardly staged, you just know that the graffiti message will play a role later in the movie.
Meanwhile, another murder victim is soon found. His name was Richard “Ricky” McCallum (played by Eduard Osipov), who was discovered beheaded in his car, with a mannequin’s head on the front passenger seat. Ricky’s grieving wife Marcy McCallum (played by Nikita Kahn) is questioned by Brian and Luke. Brian asks Marcy if Ricky had been cheating on her because condoms were found in the car. Marcy says no and insists that she and Ricky had a good marriage.
With no progress being made in this serial killer investigation, Captain Howell tells Brian and Luke that they will have a new partner who has been assigned to help. Her name is Jaclyn Waters (played by Nicky Whelan), a detective who has transferred from Tulsa, Oklahoma, but she’s originally from Australia. Brian and Luke don’t like being forced to work with this “outsider,” but they have no choice.
Their mistrust of Jaclyn grows even more when Brian and Luke find out that she’s really an investigator from internal affairs, as already revealed in the “Crescent City” trailer. The trailer also reveals that Brian and Jaclyn begin having an affair with each other. It’s really just an excuse to show Whelan in cleavage-baring lingerie in fake-looking sex scenes.
Soon after Brian, Luke and Jaclyn begin working together, a young woman named Sabrina Harris (played by Rose Lane Sanfilippo) is at the police department to report that her roommate Vanessa Perkins (played by Ciel Shi) is missing. Sabrina says that Vanessa used a Sex Addicts Anonymous website called Secrets666.com. Brian recognizes that name because he saw it on the graffiti in the bathroom just a few days before.
Brian, Luke and Jaclyn are then shown breaking into an abandoned house without a warrant. And what a coincidence: There’s a decapitated body in a bathtub, which has a mannequin’s head nearby. The murdered person is Vanessa. With no explanation whatsoever, Brian concludes that the serial killer is also a sexual sadist.
The owner of the house is listed as Robert Hedges, who was also beheaded. He was murdered 20 years ago. The prime suspect in Robert’s murder was his adult son Charlie Hedges, who has been missing ever since Robert’s murder. When Robert’s name is mentioned, Luke says to Brian and Jaclyn that he knows what it must feel like to want to get rid of a father because his own father was abusive to him when he was a child.
The rest of “Crescent City” is just one ludicrous scene after another, with many plot holes and obvious red herrings. Jaclyn creates an escort website to go “undercover” as a sex worker. It leads her to encounter a suspicious creep named Travis Reed (played by Weston Cage Coppola), who wears a mask that covers the lower half his face.
The detectives also question a shady-looking clergyman named Pastor Lawson (played by Michael Sirow), a preacher for the Methodist church where the Secrets666.com sex addicts have their meetings. And there’s a scene in a bar with Luke picking up a stranger named Tanya Nelson (played by Danielle Druz) and having sex with her in a bathroom at the bar. It won’t be the last time that Tanya is in the movie.
As already shown in the movie’s trailer, Brian and Jaclyn—at separate times—look like they could guilty of being involved in the murders. And as soon as they come under suspicion, you know that the truth isn’t that obvious. Still, even with these attempts to introduce multiple possible suspects, it’s fairly easy to figure out who the real culprit is, based on how the evidence is planted to frame certain people who are not guilty.
In a movie that is dragged down by several lackluster performances, Howard’s acting in “Crescent City” is possibly the worst of the bunch. He shows no emotional connection to his character Brian, who is supposed to be complicated and morally conflicted. Howard looks extremely bored for most of the movie. And when he does have to show any emotions in a scene, it looks forced.
Luke is such a repulsive and soulless character, Morales doesn’t have much to work with in depicting this obvious cretin. Whelan seems to be in the movie to portray the filmmakers’ sexist stereotype of a female cop whose character is defined by sleeping with a married co-worker and going undercover as a sex worker, so she will be in scenes where she’s scantily clad. In addition to the rotten plot and idiotic dialogue, “Crescent City” has sloppy editing and horrible audio dubbing. If the “Crescent City” filmmakers didn’t care about making a good movie, then you shouldn’t care about watching this garbage.
Lionsgate released “Crescent City” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on August 16, 2024.
