Suspect Is Hatless / Film

• In Airheads, Officer Wilson is told to look for Kayla, Chazz's girlfriend, on the Sunset Strip in LA. He's told she's a "blonde wearing something tight and black", unfortunately, nearly every female looks like that, making him mutter "Great, grand, wonderful...". Although he does find her eventually.
• The comedy Armed and Dangerous has rent-a-cops Dooley and Kane reamed out by their boss for failing to give an adequate description of two armed and masked robbers who Dooley traded gunfire with ("Oh yeah, I think it was the U.S. Olympic downhill team! I told you, they were wearing ski masks!"). Kane is even less helpful, but also raises a decent point in his defense:
  Kane: "Well, the big guy was... Big. And the smaller guy, he was, uh..."
  O'Connell: "Small? You're a regular Dick Tracy!"
  Kane: "Well, I'm sorry, sir; I was SCARED! When guys are chasing you with guns, you don't stop and ask them how much they weigh!"
• From Barton Fink:
  Barton Fink: He... he said he liked Jack Oakie pictures.
  [beat]
  Detective Mastrionotti: You know, ordinarily we say anything you might remember could be helpful. But I'll be frank with you, Fink. That is not helpful.
• In Batman Begins, you can't help but feel sorry for the Gotham cops trying to describe the Tumbler to the dispatcher. At least there's no mistaking it after you've seen it.
  Cop in Crushed Cruiser: He is in a vehicle!
  Dispatcher: Make and color?
  Cop in Cruiser: It's a black... [looks at his partner, who shrugs] ...tank.
  • Later in the same chase:
    Cop: At least tell me what it looks like. [The Tumbler zooms past his car with a roar] ...Never mind
• Played with in The Big Clock. Individually, the witness descriptions of the man seen with Pauline York are infuriatingly vague, with some bordering on being useless; such as the hatcheck girl giving a very detailed description of his hat, or artist Louise Patterson focusing on non-physical attributes, such as his smugness. However, by assembling all of the descriptions on The Big Board and focusing on the commonalities, the Crimeways staff are able to put together a fairly accurate description; although none of them immediately associate it with their editor George Stroud.
• Played with in Martin Lawrence vehicle Blue Streak. In one scene, an inexperienced cop tracking a suspect tries to give a description over the radio, but is hung up on the suspect's greasy, dirty hair. After he spends too long being fixated on that, Lawrence's character angrily butts in and starts pointing out more useful things to be noting.
  Man, are you a cop or a barber? Stop staring at his hair and take a look at his arm. That's a prison tat. Your boy has done some time.
• Carry On Spying has this description of The Fat Man from the Chief.
  The Chief: Male.
  Desmond: "Male."
  Harold: [to Charlie] "Male."
  Charlie: [while writing down] Male.
  The Chief: Fat.
  Desmond: "Fat."
  Harold: [to Charlie] "Fat."
  Charlie: [while writing down] Fat.
  Desmond: [disappointed] Is THAT it?
• Cellular: "He's the one on a cell phone." "EVERYONE'S on a cell phone."
• This immortal line from an RST Video customer in Clerks:
  Customer: Do you have that one with that guy, who was in that movie that was out last year?
• In Cornered!, when a man goes running out of the store, the best description a bystander can give is "he was wearing a hat".
• In D.C. Cab, Harold asks Mr. Rhythm if he remembers which cab he found the violin in. Mr. Rhythm replies: "Of course I do. It was the yellow one."
• In Desperado, the first description Bucho gets of Navajas is that he has brown hair and eyes, which Bucho points out, is not exactly distinctive in Mexico. The description then goes on to list some actually useful information which is only useful to identify the dead body Bucho's goons dragged to his home (because they mistook him for the Mariachi) as Navajas.
  • The first movie El Mariachi plays this straight, which is what kicks off the plot as there's two men "dressed in black, carrying a guitar case" walking around town. Apart from that, neither of them look anything like each other.
• And in The Eiger Sanction, Clint Eastwood's character is contracted to kill an enemy agent, but all they know is that he walks with a limp. However an intercepted message also reveals that he's an accomplished mountain climber due to go on an expedition to the Eiger. Clint snarks, "Well that's fine. Now all I have to do is kill every mountain climber with a sore foot!" To make things even more complicated, the limp only appears when the killer is in a cold place. When Clint's character figures out that the man he seeks is an old friend of his, he decides to exploit that the description is too vague and all other potential assassins were accidentally slain by the utter disaster of climbing the Eiger to let him go.
• In Fargo, none of the witnesses can describe Carl Showalter (played by Steve Buscemi) as anything more than "kinda funny looking" ("in a general way"). Well, except the one hooker who says he was uncircumcised. Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime Gaear Grimsrud (played by Peter Stormare) is only described as "Swedish".
• The Incredible Hulk (2008): after finding out that Banner is hiding in Rio de Janeiro, the villain tells his agents to be on the lookout for "a white man" in the soda factory he works at. No other description is given, even though it'd be really helpful considering that Rio has millions of people matching that description.
• In the Line of Fire invokes this trope when Secret Service agents Horrigan and D'Andrea investigate a man believed to be planning to assassinate the president. The man's neighbors can only varyingly describe him as "between 5'8 and 6'2" and "between 165 and 180 pounds", foreshadowing that the suspect knows how to avoid being noticed.
• Parodied in The Film of the Series of I Spy, Eddie Murphy's character is kidnapped and forced to reveal the identity of a spy he is working with. He desperately blurts out every bit of information he has on the spy. It turns out that the kidnapping and interrogation are staged and Murphy's character is praised for giving “vague” information.
• James Bond:
  • In The Man with the Golden Gun, when Bond talks to Miss Anders about Scaramanga. Anders does provide an actually useful description after this, such as the fact that Scaramanga is a Villain in a White Suit and prefers gold jewelry.
    Bond: How will I recognize him?
    Anders: Tall, slim and dark.
    Bond: So's my aunt.
    Anders: Yes, but how can I tell you? He's not like other men. [gestures toward her chest] He has three...
    Bond: Fascinating anatomical tidbit. But probably the most useless piece of information I've ever heard. Unless, of course, the "Bottoms Up" is a strip club and Scaramanga is performing.^note It actually is a strip club, but Scaramanga doesn't perform.
  • In Octopussy, as Bond speeds through the American Air Base's security checkpoint to stop a bomb from detonating, the Security Guard has only this to say:
    Security Guard: Captain, some nut drove through here in a stolen car. Wants the base commander, and he's wearing a red shirt!
• In Judas Kiss, the security guard gives Detective Friedman a description of the person he saw taping over the camera lens: the only one of the kidnappers he saw before he was knocked out. He had dark hair and was in his late 20s. Or 30s. Or maybe 40s. He then admits that his eyesight isn't so good.
• Reversed and Played for Laughs in Loaded Weapon 1, when in the background of one scene. A man is seen being asked by cops to describe a suspect. He gives an outrageous description, claiming the suspect had big red lips, eyes as big as plates, and so on. In a later scene, a person looking like Mr. Potatohead actually having these features is arrested by the police.
• M. The detectives are under massive public pressure to catch the child murderer, but gripe about the fact that the witness statements from that same public are all too vague to give a proper lead.
• Averted in The Night of the Generals. While the witness could only provide one, seemingly unimportant detail regarding the killer (he was wearing trousers with a red stripe on them), that description greatly narrows down the field of suspects, as only German generals wear trousers with a red stripe. Major Grau quickly narrows the suspect pool to the three generals in the city who do not have alibis.
• In No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Bell and his deputies arrive to the Moss' trailer very shortly after Anton Chigurh looked around the place. One of Bell's deputies points out that there is a half-full glass of milk in the kitchen still showing condensation so it means it was served a few minutes ago (he is right; Anton was drinking it) and Chigurh must be nearby. Bell's answer is a deadpan: "What do you suggest that we circulate, 'looking for a man who has recently drunk milk'?"
• Parodied in Paddington (2014):
  Mrs Brown: He's about 3'6, wearing a blue duffel coat and a red hat. [thinks for a moment] And he's a bear.
  Policeman: It's not much to go on...
• Predestination. While pouring out his Dark and Troubled Past to The Bartender, John complains bitterly that the only description the nurses could give of the man who kidnapped John's baby from the hospital was having a "face-shaped face like yours and mine". This foreshadows The Reveal that it was the Bartender—a future version of John—who kidnapped the baby.
• In the third act of The Santa Clause, the police are looking for protagonist Scott. The thing is, Scott has been transforming into Santa Claus throughout the movie, and it's Christmas Eve. It seems like the cops just opted to arrest any Santa that they found on the streets, including ones who look nothing like Scott (different race, wildly different body types, etc.)
• In See How They Run, Dennis the usher gives Inspector Stoppard a frustratingly vague description of a man he saw lurking backstage at the time of the murder. It turns out Dennis is the murderer and was intentionally being unhelpful.
• In Se7en, Detective Mills interviews John Doe's neighbors, and gets descriptions of a man between ages 30 and 40, between 150 and 160 pounds, and between and in height.
• In Signs, Graham and Merrill are giving their cop friend a description of the trespasser they saw on their property the previous night. The suspect in question was a Grey and the two brothers aren't quite ready to believe that there's an Alien Invasion going on yet, so the only concrete statement she gets out of them are that the suspect is well over six feet tall, presumably male judging by its athleticisim, and, repeatedly, that it was very dark.
• After one of the murders committed by the Outlaw Couple in Sightseers, we hear on the car radio that the police are looking for "a ginger-faced man and an angry woman."
• Played with in Taken. When the daughter is being kidnapped, her father tells her specifically to scream identifying characteristics into her cell phone, so he can have something to work with when rescuing her. That doesn't really add much evidence to his searching though, and the real lead comes from when the kidnapper talks into the cell phone after kidnapping the daughter. She does manage to describe a tattoo the man has, which lets Brian identify the gang.
• Exploited as part of a brilliant Ringer Ploy in the climax of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). Crown goes into a museum and makes sure that the security cameras see him, and that they can identify him as wearing a business suit and a bowler hat, and carrying a valise. Upon donning the hat, his face can no longer be seen by the cameras, so the guards have to track him by his outfit. Within a minute, over a dozen other people of the same height and build wearing the same outfit start randomly walking around the museum, carrying identical valises that they repeatedly pass between each other. While security runs around in circles trying to detain all the men in business suits and bowlers, Crown ditches his for a tan trenchcoat and is able to complete his business and walk away completely unnoticed.
• The kid witness Gillie in Tiger Bay describes the murderer to the police as a "tall-ish, fair-ish, fat-ish man... with a hat". Although she's doing it on purpose to help the real murderer escape.
• The Clint Eastwood movie Tightrope:
  Max: The killer's a Caucasian, blood type O... about in his mid-40s. We found traces of a red fiber on all the victims.
  Woman: From what?
  Max: We don't know.
  Woman: Any suspects?
  Max: About 120,000 of them.
  Woman: Anything you'd like me to tell the mayor?
  Max: Yeah. He's one of them.
• Special Agent Dale Cooper predicts in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me that the next victim would be a blonde female highschooler who "is sexually active" and "is using drugs; she's crying out for help." Albert snarks: "Well damn, Cooper, that really narrows it down. You're talking about half the high school girls in America!"
• In Witness, the best description that young Samuel, visiting from the nearby Amish community, can give of the murderer whose face he saw is basically that he was a black man. The detective assigned to the case gets nowhere, with either a line-up or a collection of mugshots, until Samuel wanders the police department and spots the killer in a newspaper clipping of a narcotics officer.

---