Veteran homicide detective Kyle Bodine mentors the young detective Lamar Dickey on a crime scene, claiming that criminals always make a mistake. Kyle meets Rachel and falls in love with her, but she is married to the arrogant Rupert. Rachel flees to a hotel in Miami, but returns and shoots Rupert, persuading Kyle to not report the murder and hide the corpse in the lake. The police investigate Rupert's disappearance, and although Kyle cleaned all traces in the house, find a 38 mm bullet in the wall, the same Kyle uses. The corpse is found. Kyle discovers Rachel cooperated with Lamaer to spy on her husband, and that Lamar framed him by inserting the 38 mm bullet in the corpse. When Kyle insists Lamar give him his gun back, the police arrives at the parking lot and shoot Kyle. An angry Rachel takes the gun and shoots Lamar.
Made in the tradition of classic Hollywood film noirs in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, the feature length directorial debut film of cinematographer John Bailey is a proportionally well made modern "update" of said subgenre, staying true to its foundations. Ed Harris is great in a rare leading role as homicide detective Kyle who falls in the typical 'love ploy' of the married Rachel who tricks him into aiding and abetting the murder of her husband. The first half an hour are bland and routine, exhausting a little bit the goodwill of the viewers, yet once the murder happens, the various plot twists start to engage dramatically, and numerous set-ups lead to a satisfaying payoffs. One such set-up is that Kyle often chastises his young new partner Lamar (Benicio del Toro) for not noticing little details at the crime scene, only to later on regret it when Lamar starts unexpectedly noticing clues in the murder of Rachel's husband, all leading to implicating Kyle himself. The sole sequence where Kyle attempts to clean all traces of the murder Rachel's husband at his home is brilliant, showing how Kyle meticulously extracts a bullet from the wall and paints it over, dumps the corpse in the lake and throws the gun at the top of a truck, which drives off. Kyle is thus shocked when Lamar observes that the perpetrator could not have buried the corpse, since it was raining the entire day, and how Rachel is lying about the broken window, which is jammed. Kyle even shoots at a sand dune, to later retrieve the bullet, compare it with the alleged bullet found in the corpse, and conclude he was framed. The ending is somewhat underwhelming and lukewarm, yet "China Moon" has more than enough virtues to confirm that it is a quality film.
Grade:++
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