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Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Verdict: "The Mighty Quinn" has some moments, and Denzel Washington gets to turn on the charm on more than a few occasions. But this surprisingly compelling murder mystery isn't explored nearly deep enough, nor are most of its characters. A rare movie that could have stood to be longer, rather than shorter.
Where to watch: Stream on Prime Video (subscription required), Tubi(free with ads), Pluto TV (free with ads) or The Roku Channel(free with ads).
"The Mighty Quinn" is this week's movie in my ongoing Denzel Watchathon. For those of you who haven't read my previous articles in this year-long project, I was inspired by an X (Twitter) post by The New York Times senior staff writer Brooklyn White-Grier, which stated that you could watch one of Denzel's 52 movies every week of 2026 without needing to repeat a movie. So I'm doing exactly that, starting with "Carbon Copy" and ending with "Highest 2 Lowest."
If you want to watch this movie before you read on, I have some great news. Unlike many of Denzel's early movies, "The Mighty Quin is available on one of the best streaming services and several of the best free streaming services. You can stream it as part of your Prime Video subscription, or stream it for free on Tubi, Pluto TV or The Roku Channel.
Regardless of how you watch, once you're done watching, read on for my review of this 1989 mystery movie, and my take on whether or not the critical praise it received was well-deserved.
Malcolm has been with the Streaming team at Tom's Guide since 2023, reviewing dozens of movies each year so you don't have to watch the bad ones.
'The Mighty Quinn' is a fast-paced romp that fails to delve deep enough into its dark mystery
If you go to Wikipedia, you'll see this movie billed as a mystery comedy. Once you finish watching "The Mighty Quinn," you'll be questioning how the free encylcopedia landed on the "comedy" part of that description.
Here are the other Denzel Washington movies I've covered so far in our Denzel Watchathon:
To be clear, this movie certainly lives up to its billing as a mystery movie. Right out the gate, we see a dead body boiling in a hot tub that's a vivid blood red. Well, that's not technically true. The first thing we see in the movie is Quinn, who is married, flirting with a woman at a wedding and then using martial arts to subdue a would-be assailant. But shortly after that, we get our dead body in a hotel jacuzzi.
If you're paying attention, you'll actually see the real murder weapon as the two women who discover Pater's dead body walk into the hotel room. But that's irrelevant to those in power. When Quinn arrives on the scene to investigate, he's quickly told that the culprit is his friend Maubee (Robert Townsend), they have evidence and that Quinn just needs to arrest his friend and let a judge decide the rest.
Quinn pretty quickly suspects that there's something fishy going on, and as a viewer, it's pretty clear that something's not right. Maybe it's that the power broker on the island, Mr. Elgin (James Fox), who is white, is so adamant that Quinn just do what he's told, whether it's what he thinks he should do or not. You don't actually hear him call Quinn "boy," but you sure can see it on Eglin's face that he'd like too.
But it's not just the white people on the island looking to pin the murder of a white man on a Black man. The Governor (Norman Beaton), who is Black, is in lockstep with Elgin, saying they just need to get Maubee in front of a judge so news of a murder doesn't impact tourism on the island.
This setup opens "The Mighty Quinn" up to a fairly deep and complex examination of colonialism, racial politics, the corruption of police systems and governments, (often) impoverished nations' reliance on tourism revenues, etc. Especially when, partway through the movie, it's revealed there is a larger conspiracy at work, involving a serious colonial power and a serious amount of off-the-books, dirty cash.
But aside from a few passing remarks and a story Quinn tells his son about how snakes can't tell if they're biting someone who is white or someone who is Black, we don't get much of any of that. Instead, we get a fairly straightforward murder mystery with a charismatic Denzel performance at its center. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves you relatively underwhelmed, especially given that the moments that do hint at a dark conspiracy thriller in this movie actually show promise.
Verdict: 'The Might Quinn' is worth a watch for $0, but I'm not sure why critics loved it
To be clear, I don't think "The Mighty Quinn" is a bad movie. I'm just not sure it's a good one. Yes, Denzel is charming and sexy, but he does almost nothing with that sex appeal despite almost all the women on the island clearly finding him attractive. It's surprisingly tame, especially given that this movie is almost setting him up to be a James Bond-like character, even though he's a policeman rather than a spy.
So if we're not going to have a sexy, fast-paced romp of a murder mystery, let's slow it down and get into a tense, dark conspiracy thriller. If you're not going to give me "Goldfinger," at least give me "Skyfall."
But, as I've said, while the movie plays around with that concept, it never fully commits, and it ultimately left me underwhelmed. So I was stunned to see that this movie is currently rated 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, that's more due to how Rotten Tomatoes' scoring system works; a fresh rating simply means the movie thought the movie was good, it doesn't elaborate on how good the movie was. But I felt that the 48% percent rating from audiences was more indicative of the relative quality of "The Mighty Quinn" than the critics' rating would indicate.
Still, for the low, low price of free 99 (that's $0, for those unfamiliar with the phrase), I think that it's a perfectly fine movie to watch if you're looking for a throwback 1980s murder mystery. It's certainly far from the worst movie Denzel did in that decade.
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