I was two cold ones into another lonely afternoon when the fax came in.
The electric gargle caught me off guard for three reasons: 1) the fax machine had been out of commission, unplugged for over 20 years; 2) nobody had that number; and 3) the note that rattled through was asking me to do something I’d never done before.
Granted, as a private eye in the state of Florida, I’d seen my share of shenanigans. But nothing like this. And the messenger wasn’t asking me to solve the case of a dead body or disappeared person or the extracurricular activities of a wayward spouse.
I was being hired to investigate a missing film.
FAX
TO: Det. Benjamin Roll
FROM: Unknown
DATE: November 2024
Subject: Out of Time, Out of Mind
Detective,
There’s a film in South Florida that’s disappeared. It’s 21 years old. Directed by Carl Franklin, Out of Time, starring Denzel Washington and Sanaa Lathan, has always been a “guilty pleasure” of mine.
But why should I feel guilty?
Which brings me to you. I’m reaching out because the film is missing from the canon of top-tier neo-noirs. And I’ll pay you to go to Banyan Key to get some answers…
The messenger had me at “pay.”
With inflation rising faster than sea levels, I needed to make dollars, so I didn’t care if the case made no sense. I broke out my old aloha shirt, dusted off my Panama hat, and headed south to see about this missing film.
Is Out of Time an overlooked neo-noir gem, or just another B-is-for-bargain-bin movie?
I. Background
On the way down in my Oldsmobile, I watched the movie to get a sense of what I’d be looking for. Matt Lee Whitlock (Denzel Washington) is the chief of police in the very sweaty, very sleepy community of Banyan Key. Right away, he receives a call from Ann Merai-Harrison (Sanaa Lathan). Somebody broke into her place, she tells him. He goes over to check it out.
Once there, Whitlock asks Ann to describe the intruder.
“Come to think of it,” she says, “he kinda looked like you.”
Whitlock raises his eyebrows. “Looked like me?”
But looks, as the film reveals, can be damningly deceiving. Case in point: This charged exchange is a good cop/bad girl role play between lovers. Deeper than that, we are witnessing an affair, as they both are married. Ann’s husband, Chris Harrison (Dean Cain), is an abusive former quarterback; Whitlock’s wife, Alex Diaz-Whitlock (Eva Mendes), is a razor-toned detective who wants a divorce.
When Whitlock joins Ann at a doctor’s appointment, they learn she has cancer. Six months to live. Ann can’t afford experimental treatment, so Whitlock lends her the station’s seized drug money—a bone-headed move that thrusts him into a sweltering helter-skelter. When Ann’s body is found “s’mored” at home in an arson attack, Whitlock races against the clock to uncover who murdered her and where the money went before his estranged detective wife sees all the signs pointing to him.
Despite the heat radiating off this sun-boiled thriller, critics gave it a cold-shoulder shrug back in 2003. Now, as I sped down State Route 777—sticky air pressing against me like shrink wrap—I thought about that mysterious fax. Why did this film go missing? It had all the elements…or, at least, it seemed to. But “seems” don’t tie loose ends together.
I needed hard evidence. Proof that this neo-noir deserved more respect. To be fully seen. Figured I’d start by investigating the man with the vision, tracing his fingerprints against the genre’s blueprint.
II. Evidence Collection / Findings
Exhibit A: The Style
I was introduced to Carl Franklin in 1995 via his noir thriller, Devil in a Blue Dress. Also starring Washington (as Easy Rawlins). The source material was a novel by Walter Mosley, who steeps his mysteries in the gritty tradition of hard-boiled crime fiction. The line that inspired his career comes from The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler:
“He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor his gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.”
For Franklin to adapt Mosley’s book was no coincidence. He, too, had an affinity for stark cynicism and sharp similes—for the shades of off-gray in a morally black-and-white world. This was already evident three years prior, as he shifted from actor to director with One False Move. Critics sang its praises. Gene Siskel called it the best film of 1992. Keep in mind: Franklin didn’t call the film a noir.
“I looked at it as a crime drama,” he told The Reveal in 2023. “And even that didn’t dictate any conventions that we had to follow. I don’t know that I’d even heard the term ‘neo-noir’ at that point. There had just simply been film noir, and One False Move didn’t look like any of the noir movies that I had been drawn to, The Big Sleep or Chinatown or Farewell My Lovely or The Maltese Falcon. I did have some of those movies in mind when I did Devil In a Blue Dress, but not for One False Move.”
By 2003, the term “neo-noir” lurked in every corner of Hollywood, from the newest blood like Memento (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Minority Report (2002) to retroactively labeled classics like Body Heat (1981), which Out of Time clearly lies in the sizzling lineage of.
Unlike the dark alleys of traditional noir, Out of Time (2003), filmed by Dutch cinematographer Theo van de Sande, operates in broad daylight. Whitlock’s every move is out in the open, at risk of being exposed in the bright sun and wide shots. No deep shadows to hide in, chief. The color palette adds vibrancy to the images: Hawaiian shirts and warm hues, tangelos and teals that splash—like many neo-noirs this side of Point Blank—in rich contrast to the traditional use of chiaroscuro.
And this camera moves. With zooms, pans, and more cross-cutting than a scrapbook club, Franklin is in complete command as observed with the fax tampering and battle on the balcony scenes.
But for some odd reason, Out of Time wasn’t climbing to the top of any lists (except for the Black Reel Awards, which gave the film top honors and Sanaa Lathan her flowers). It cost a cool $50 million to make and raked in $55 million at the box office. Not an outright flop. Critical reception hovered in the low 60s, score-wise. Not an all-out disaster by a long shot. So why was it missing?
The facts weren’t adding up. I parked the Olds and walked around the neighborhood. Paid no mind to locals peeping at me from their windows. As twilight crept over Banyan Key, I set my sights skyward.
Exhibit B: The Stars
Blazing hot off his “burn this motherfucker down” performance in Training Day (2001), Washington was untouchable, riding high at the peak of his powers. He followed that Oscar-winning role with John Q. and Antwone Fisher (his directorial debut) in 2002.
He was knocking on 50. Could have taken any lead he wanted. He chose Chief Whitlock. “He’s very complex, which is what I thought was interesting,” Washington said at the time. “He’s human, stupid, arrogant, a big fish in a small pond, and worse than an adulterer. I see this as very much a film about temptation …”
His out-of-his-depth yet charming chief next to Lathan’s in-deep-water seductress oozes with old-school chemistry. The type of tension you feel in your pores.
Up to this point, Lathan had mostly done romantic comedies (and starred in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 classic Love & Basketball). But she auditioned for the part of Ann, a layered role initially written with a certain type in mind. As Lathan recalled in a 2003 interview, “the description for her was ‘skinny, bleached-blonde sexy soccer mom.’”
Lathan kills in her turn as the femme fatale—vulnerably desperate with dagger-shaped dollar signs in her eyes. Then there’s Cain, known mainly for playing Superman on TV and hosting Ripley’s Believe It or Not, going mano a mano with Whitlock as Ann’s brutish husband. Mendes (Washington’s Training Day mistress) brings a straight-laced edge to the proceedings: bristling with unresolved tension, her character serves as a steady counterpoint to Whitlock’s frantic antics.
And for comic relief, John Billingsley delivers as Chae, the medical examiner and Whitlock’s buddy. Given the film’s tenor, I was tempted to believe he was behind the whole thing. But Chae’s a hopeful romantic whose loyalty and dry asides add levity to this pressure cooker. Even the actors in minor parts—the imposter doctor, the hotel clerk, the near-sighted neighbor lady—pack their scenes with credible punches. So the performances couldn’t be to blame for the missing film.
By now, the sun was down. Silhouettes of banyan trees waved at me to go home. But I wasn’t done yet. I checked into a cheap hotel. The A/C grumbled for a few minutes, then shut off. Busted.
Cracking open a beer, I stepped onto my balcony, hearing nothing but crickets.
Exhibit C: The Score
Speaking of sounds, next on my list of leads was Graeme Revell, the New Zealand composer who served the Out of Time score with an umbrella in it. This swirling sonic cocktail of calypso and Latin jazz spills across the tropical scenery—a heady blend of island drums, acoustic guitars, and sultry horns, all flowing smoother than a coastal breeze.
Yet, despite this hypnotic concoction, the score didn’t exactly scream noir. Could Revell be responsible for this missing film?
That couldn’t be true. Not every neo-noir clings to the genre’s moody soundscapes of yore. Not Memento. Not Mulholland Drive. Definitely not Minority Report. In any case, Revell—whose versatile output leaned heavily on electronic, computer-based sounds—was tapped by Robert Rodriguez to help score Sin City (2005), possibly the most noir-y of all neo-noirs.
“The first piece I wrote was the opening titles, which had a saxophone and a film noir feel but with a modern twist to it,” Rodriguez said. “That set the stage in my mind to creating a score that was traditional, yet modern.”
Sin City came out two years after Out of Time. I discovered that Rodriguez teamed up with Revell and John Debney for the score, handing out specific instructions for their sequences. Debney went full film noir. Told to avoid an orchestra, Revell fused synthesizers, a saxophone, trombone, bass, and vocals.
In Revell’s words, “Robert said he had enjoyed the way I worked on From Dusk ‘Till Dawn, creating new sound(s) and destroying old ones.”
This quote stuck with me: this idea of deconstruction and reconstruction is a vital part of neo-noir, tipping a fedora to the past without living there. If this was integral to Revell’s process, he definitely had it during Out of Time, so I doubted he orchestrated its disappearance.
It was past midnight now. Legally Blonde played in the background on a 13-inch TV as I laid all the cards out on the table. The light kept flickering. The clock was ticking. The film was still missing. But if the director, the actors, and the composer weren’t guilty, I had only one other card left to flip.
Exhibit D: The Script
I always believed a film’s life or death sentence rested with the screenplay. Everything begins here, as black words bring blank pages to life. Out of Time is straightforward in a twisty-turny way—a story of morally ambiguous forces, a time-worn tale that obeys the hard-boiled law of motion: for every act of sexual satisfaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Perhaps the punishment for violating this law is what separates the crème de la crème from the bottom of the bin. Traditional noir veers bleak. On a downward spiral, the compromised protagonist usually hits rock bottom hard and stays there—psychologically, if not fatally. Without descending into parody, Out of Time goes lighter, brighter, with a tense yet playful tone that matches its watercolor backdrop. Whitlock survives to see another day and reunites with his estranged wife with a slap on the wrist.
Could this happy ending be the culprit?
The screenplay was written by Dave Collard. I checked him out, thinking I might find a clue in his body of work. He wrote Annapolis (2006) and over a dozen episodes of Family Guy before that. His most recent credit is Transplants, a graphic novel published by Dark Horse that raises the question: if you suddenly received a set of superpowers, would you use them for good?
Sounded intriguing, if unrelated to the mission at hand. But then I learned that Collard told Screen Rant he came up with the idea while signing up to be an organ donor.
“Hey, what if Superman was an organ donor?” he said. “And what if this square-jawed white dude had his powers transferred to a group of people who traditionally haven’t had power?” From there, the concept took flight as a story to “deconstruct the superhero genre a little while placing it in the ongoing national debate about power and privilege.”
There was that word again: deconstruct. This stood out even more, considering what Lathan had shared about Ann’s character being written as a “skinny, bleached-blonde sexy soccer mom.” Diving deeper, I discovered the characters in Out of Time were conceived as white. According to Franklin, all that changed during the casting process. Once Washington signed on, the studio wanted to “take advantage of some of the other demographics,” Franklin said. “And that meant we could go interracial with the relationships and give us a chance to mix it up some.”
Now this was a piece of evidence worth chewing on. Was race behind the film’s mild reception? I wondered. Picture the exact same script, same direction, but with George Clooney as Whitlock and Naomi Watts as Ann. Would critics and audiences have responded differently?
Would the film still be missing?
Or is the film at fault for not wading further into the racial undercurrents, beyond the subtle nod to the stereotype that “all Black men look guilty,” as underscored in the scene where the near-sighted neighbor lady points at Whitlock? Personally, I didn’t think so. Every film made by a Black man starring a Black man doesn’t have to be explicitly about ‘being a Black man’ to be critically respected.
I opened my eyes. Forgot where I was for a second. The sun peeked through broken blinds. Bedsprings squeaked as I regained my bearings. I was beyond tired but I couldn’t afford to stay another night.
III. Conclusion
Driving up State Route 777, I felt I had more questions than I came down with. Like there was a key element I’d overlooked in this case—bad marketing, maybe, or the bland, blink-and-you’ll-forget-it title. Or the behind-the-scenes friction between a world-weary director and his seasoned, leading man.
“We didn’t have hard feelings when we left the set,” Franklin said of Washington in the L.A. Times, “but there were flare-ups.”
In response, Washington acknowledged: “I can be tough, and then I’d see that look in his eye and I’d say ‘I’m sorry.’ … I am interested in making the best picture.”
Confused and coffeeless, I stopped at a small-town diner. Overcooked egg in my mouth, my mind floated back to the fax—the one in the movie. Right at the midpoint—minute 53:05—the scene begins with a ringing fax phone. The camera zooms into Whitlock’s distressed face. He’s a dead man if his wife sees his name all over his mistress’s incoming phone records. For a gripping, sweat-dripping three minutes and 35 seconds, Whitlock maneuvers, gator-like, to keep from getting falsely accused.
I kept asking myself: Why this scene as the film’s centerpiece?
Right then, the coffee mug fell from my hand, breaking on the floor.
A fax, short for facsimile, represents a copy of something. From the Latin phrase meaning “make alike.” Maybe the film vanished due to a lack of originality—a replica by design of older (more admired) relatives like The Big Clock (1948) and No Way Out (1987), lost in the shadows.
Keep in mind: In the same L.A. Times article, Franklin admitted Out of Time, like his previous thriller High Crimes (2002), was nothing but “popcorn fare.” This was a conscious decision after he crawled through the emotional gauntlet directing One True Thing (1998). In that film, a career woman returns home to care for her cancer-stricken mother (Meryl Streep, earning an Oscar nomination) in possibly the most anti-noir-y of all anti-noirs.
Despite slight overlaps between One True Thing and Out of Time—cancer, affairs, a ticking clock, title resemblances—the films were worlds apart. Franklin, who grew up in Richmond, California, and has been described as “intensely sensitive and private” said One True Thing was deeply personal for him, the most meaningful movie he’d ever made. On the contrary, he said, “I don’t think you will walk away from Out of Time with any great life-changing messages.”
As I cleaned up the mess I made, I wondered if Franklin was right—that this movie was made to go down easy. As a lowly private eye, who was I to disagree with the man with the vision? And yet, I did. Even if this film is never found in the neo-noir canon, I was reminded that we’re all guilty of making questionable choices for all kinds of reasons, known and unknown. Motives may be flawed, actions misdirected. Still, what’s real runs deeper. And on the surface, Out of Time may look like heavy-on-the-salt popcorn fare.
But looks, as the film reveals, can be damningly deceiving.