An orthodox trashy murder mystery boasting, however, a most unorthodox detective: a ranting, psychotic street person (Samuel L. Jackson) with a headful of dreadlocks and a well-stocked hideaway inside a rock formation in a public park. (Everyone on the street knows the Caveman by name and address, but no one touches his television.) The hero's paranoid delusions about a Big Brother atop the Chrysler Building go far beyond the allowable flaws of the American crime-solver (alcoholism, amnesia, blindness, what-have-you). We require our detectives at least to be rational. This one's deficiency in that department provides no added interest, only added irritation, to the case at hand: a tissue of contrivance and convenience from start to finish. The Caveman's daughter happens to be a cop. He himself happens to be a Juilliard dropout -- a pianistic prodigy -- and an old classmate happens to be buddies with the leading suspect in the case, a chi-chi homoerotic photographer (and walking cliché of the cruel sneering heartless artist: "All great art is born of suffering"). A yuppie philanthropist, touched by the panhandler's plea for a pencil and his use of it to jot down musical notes, welcomes him to a Steinway, a bathtub, and a suit of clothes in preparation for a glittering soirée at the photographer's country estate. There is no clue as to how, without a lift from his Juilliard chum, the Caveman is able to make repeated return trips to this remote spot. And we get precious few details, for that matter, of his hand-to-mouth daily life, certainly not enough of them to qualify the film as an acceptable character study in lieu of an acceptable detective story. Colm Feore, Ann Magnuson, Aunjanue Ellis; directed by Kasi Lemmons. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd