By Roberto Leal
Briar patch: The place you secretly really want to be, even though the person sending you there thinks it’s a punishment
— Urban Dictionary
Rosario Dawson brings her formidable, urban, Latina star power to the USA Network’s murder mystery; Briarpatch. Dawson plays Allegra Dill, an investigator, who returns to her hometown on the Tex-Mex border, to find out who killed her sister and finds herself entangled in a complex web of political corruption. Given Dawson’s early upbringing and film career, it’s a role she was destined to bring to life on the small screen.
Dawson rose out of a hard-scrabble, poverty-stricken childhood in the tenement slums of NYC, to achieve stardom first in film, and now, on television. The stunning Dawson, of Afro Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage, first appeared in film, at the age of sixteen as a sexually active teen in 1995’s Kids.
This was followed by a series of movies spotlighting the sultry, seductive, streetwise Dawson walking on the wild side, in roles that included playing prostitutes and drug addicts. Oddly, these edgy, morally conflicted characters prepared her perfectly for her star turn in Briarpatch.
All the edginess and world-weary alienation that served Dawson so well in her previous film incarnations, is still there. However, in Briarpatch, Dawson skillfully submerges those qualities under the cool, detached, strong, determined demeanor of Allegra Dill.
Allegra comes back to San Bonifacio with a lot of questions about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s death. When she finds out her sister had left an account with a huge sum of money, she begins to wonder if her police detective sister was a crooked cop or on the take. Dawson spoke about Briarpatch, in a recent red carpet interview. Interestingly, Dawson reveals that Briarpatch creator, Andy Greenwald, changed the original lead character, based on the Ross Thomas novel, from male to female.
Smart move, Andy!
Allegra’s investigation leads her into encounters with some shady, devious characters who are obviously hiding something from her. This causes her to occasionally loses that controlled aloofness and serves as a bittersweet reminder why she left the border town for the DC Swamp. An obscure writer* once correctly observed: “Dylan Thomas said you can never go home again. That may be true, but you never leave your neighborhood.”
And so, it is with Allegra Dill. She’s been gone from San Bonifacio for twelve years and is an investigator for a senator. But now she finds herself back in her old ‘hood in the familiar milieu of small-town Texas.
I do have two small quibbles with Briarpatch:
Briarpatch is set in a Texas border town. Gore Vidal referred to that unique strip of America as The Occupied Territories. Why? Because it’s occupied by Mexicans! The average Latino population there is 80%. There’s a visible lack of Latinos in San Bonifacio. Maybe most of the Mexicans in San Bonifacio moved to El Paso.
Hard-boiled, uncompromising murder mystery stories with duplicitous, shady, shifty, morally ambiguous characters are the stuff of classic film noir. Briarpatch certainly fills the bill. However, film noir should be shot in stark, contrasting shades of black and white. Pretty rare today. But the graphic novel movie is the perfect platform for today’s film noir. Rosario Dawson plays a prostitute in Frank Miller’s moody, atmospheric, violent, Sin City. The graphic novel look, illuminated and enhances Dawson’s beauty and toughness in that role.
But those are just personal, nit-picky details on my part and don’t affect the overall production values of Briarpatch.
Rosario Dawson has joined a growing list of resourceful, powerhouse Latina superstars like Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Jennifer Lopez, to name a few, who are now calling the shots with their own production companies and turning out projects that speak to the Latina experience.
Dawson was the executive producer and star of the 2008 TV series Gemini Division. Dawson plays NYC…wait for it…” tough-as-nails, streetwise”, undercover cop, Detective Anna Diaz. In a world where a blown cover could mean death, Diaz must remain “distant, cool and detached”. Where have I heard that before?
Oh, who cares? Dawson has perfected that tough, resourceful Latina persona and it’s just sheer, good fun watching her deal with the seedy characters inhabiting the dark underbelly of the Tex-Mex border town in Briarpatch.
Briarpatch airs on Thursday nights on the USA Network.