Written By: Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson Based on the novel by James Ellroy Directed by Curtis Hanson Rating: **** out of ****
"Go back to Jersey, Sonny. This is the City of the Angels and you haven't got any wings."
If I had to choose one particular line of dialogue from L.A. Confidential that perfectly summarised the kind of feeling you get from watching this film… well, I don't think I could do it. The reality is that every single moment of this film is so well crafted that I can't see how it could possibly be improved. However, the above quote, uttered by Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) during a violent police interrogation, succinctly sums up the world of L.A. Confidential. This is a world of tough justice, where the cops are every bit as bad as the criminals and corruption lurks everywhere. This is classic film noir.
The story revolves around three cops in L.A. during the 50s, whose lives become entangled following a horrendous spree killing at the Night Owl Coffee Shop. Bud White (Russell Crowe) is the merciless cop who prefers the violent brand of justice. Ed Exley (Guy Pierce) is the ambitious, by-the-book cop, who is trying to live up to his father's police career. Kevin Spacey (Jack Vincennes) is the cop who works as technical advisor for a TV show, who, in a rather poetic moment, admits that he can't remember why he became a cop in the first place.
Now this may all sound rather routine for the genre, but L.A. Confidential is superior to almost all its noir relatives. The script is so well written and the acting is so uniformly superb, that it's two and a half hour length actually feels short, even upon multiple viewings. Indeed, L.A. Confidential deserves to mentioned alongside other landmark noir films such as The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown and The Big Sleep.
The film crams so much plot into it's run-time, that there's no way I can provide an adequate summary in this review. I haven't even mentioned the roles of Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), Sid Hudgeons (Danny DeVito), or Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn), and yet they're all such memorable characters.
Probably the most amazing thing about L.A. Confidential is the fact that Curtis Hanson's name is next to the writing and directing credits. We're talking about the man who's previous accomplishments in film include The River Wild and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (just thinking about them makes me cringe). However, Hanson has made a complete turnaround with L.A. Confidential and proven that he can make film on a level far above most of his contemporaries. What remains to be seen is whether he will emerge as the latest auteur or remain a one-hit-wonder.
Reviewed by: A. Estey (gbv_adam@hotmail.com) Copyright 1999, by A. Estey
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews