The story
Eugene Grimes, a doctor living in the underbelly of New Orleans, wakes in the night to find a woman with a bullet wound Callie Carter and a case containing $2 million abandoned on his doorstep. Drawn into a dark labyrinth of betrayal, killing and revenge by Callie and her partner in crime, Luther Logan, Grimes finds himself forced to confront the nightmare of his own dark past stretching to a bloody civil war in El Salvador a decade before and whether forgiveness is far superior, and courageous, an act than revenge.

Bad City Blues is a dark tale of human violence and inner pain. The hero of the story, Eugene Grimes, is man of great personal courage and compassion -- a doctor who is haunted by his hatred for a man he once loved, but who betrayed him in the most terrible way. Around Grimes -- as if by destiny -- are drawn a series of characters who, each in their own unique way, are also wounded by both love and hatred: New Orleans' awesome Captain of Vice, Clarence Jefferson, who can only tolerate the perversion of justice that defines his world by perverting it beyond imagination. Callie, a woman scarred by her own past, who undertakes a fearsome ordeal in order to be redeemedby a reunion with her lost child. Luther, a man of war, ravaged inside by guilt, who seeks absolution in the only terms he understands: violence and death. These characters are sucked down into a hellish maelstrom from which they all emerge -- even if only on the point of death -- with a new understanding of themselves and of each other.

All the characters, in their way, seek forgiveness and love; and in their dark way, all of them ultimately achieve what they most need.

For an independent, Bad City Blues is a film of some scope, encompassing both decades and continents within its reach -- intense locations, sudden twists -- and plunges from violence and action to psychological revelation and shattering emotional catharsis. Finally, it’s leavened with a lot of dark humour.

Principal photography concluded in January of 1999 in Montana. A rough cut was shown at the Directors Guild of America in May 1999, and the film had its festival premiere at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival in October of 1999.