

According to a former homicide investigator, Denzel Washington’s critically panned $151 million thriller gets a few detective details right, but it also has some key flaws. Washington has had a wide range of roles, from ex-CIA agent John Creasy in Man on Fire to Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth. He’s also had a few roles as a cop or FBI-type character. The biggest example is Training Day, but another example is a much less discussed Denzel role in The Bone Collector.
Directed by Phillip Noyce, The Bone Collector is a 1999 crime thriller based on Jeffery Deaver’s book of the same name. Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a paralyzed forensics expert in New York City. He works with patrol officer Amelia Donaghy, played by Angelina Jolie, to catch a serial killer. The film is a financial success, earning $151.5 million with a $48 million budget. However, the movie has only a 28% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
When speaking with Insider on their How Real Is It series, former homicide detective Pat Postiglione explains that The Bone Collector got a good number of details right. At the 20:53 mark, the detective explains how the details of investigating every angle of the crime scene and the use of tape for lifting a hair are accurate to real life. But he had some critiques for the scene where Amelia investigates the dark crime scene with only a flashlight, and for how she cuts the handoff of a victim to get fingerprints on a pair of handcuffs and said that “would probably not happen.” He gave an accuracy rating of six.