L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (Warner Bros.) Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito. Screenplay: Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson, based on the novel by James Ellroy. Producers: Curtis Hanson, Arnon Milchan, Michael Nathanson. Director: Curtis Hanson. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, violence, brief nudity) Running Time: 140 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Early though it may be to make such a prediction, I'm going to do so: no one will be more deserving of an Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1997 than Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson. James Ellroy's 1990 novel "L.A. Confidential" was 496 pages of sprawling, tangled plotting and a staccato prose style in which entire chapters seemed to fly by without a single verb rearing its active little head. Even the author himself said he didn't always know what was going on at any given time. Hanson and Helgeland took that narrative and tamed it into an intricate but accessible crime drama. They remained true to both the style and gritty substance of the story while giving it the appeal of pop entertainment.
Which is not to say that they have created an unqualified triumph. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is the kind of sturdy, satisfying studio vehicle which turns up rarely enough that it's easy to mistake it for a minor masterpiece. It's well-crafted but never dazzling, consistently interesting without being engrossing. Helgeland and Hanson haven't exactly taken an unfilmable novel and turned it into a classic. They've taken a novel which would have been a three hour art film and made a 140-minute mainstream multiplex success.
Set in 1951-52, the bulk of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL focuses on Hollywood police precinct filled with shady characters. Det. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) pays more attention to serving as technical advisor to a "Dragnet"-style TV show and getting pay-offs from a tabloid reporter (Danny DeVito) than he does to his job; Det. Bud White (Russell Crowe) regularly beats uncooperative suspects into submission. Into this world steps Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), the son of a decorated cop who appears determined to do things by the book. Unfortunately, the book doesn't cover how to deal with complex cases like the mass slaying at the Nite Owl diner, a case which turns out to have far broader implications than anyone suspects.
There's more than a whiff of CHINATOWN to L.A. CONFIDENTIAL -- it's hard not to break into a chuckle when one character appears with a Jake Gittes Memorial Nose Bandage -- but the story manages to stake out its own unique territory in exposing the dark side of booming post-war Los Angeles. It does a particularly impressive job of hooking into the relationship between high-profile crime and the media, skewering the public's inexhaustible appetite for sordid tales about which they can feel morally superior. Curtis Hanson's direction manages to navigate a smart path between the glossy image of Hollywood and the sleazy reality. It's a perfectly appropriate ambiguity that L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (photographed by the talented Dante Spinotti) may be one of the best-looking films ever made about ugly doings.
It's also appropriate that the characters are similarly ambiguous, complex people whose motivations are never as pure or as selfish as they appear at first glance. Another of the accomplishments in this fine script is that those characters feel softer and more humanized than they do in Ellroy's novel, easier to sympathize with. Yet one of the problems with L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is that while the characters are uniformly well-acted and multi-dimensional, there's not enough time to get under the skin of any one character. We find ourselves surprised by some of the decisions the characters make, but once we understand a single basic motivation for each one there's not much left to learn about them. Pearce, Crowe and Spacey do solid work with solid characters. They're never boring, and never fascinating.
Hanson and Helgeland still do an impressive enough job that I couldn't help wishing they had trusted their own skill with material a bit more. The plot twists of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL may be a lot to take in, but not so much that they require the constant nudging the script and direction provide. Every character is identified in bold letters (sometimes literally), every significant development is accompanied by a flashback or wordy exposition to make sure we realize the significance, and whole chunks of the film are summarized at various points like chapter-ending Cliff's Notes. It all gives a smart film the feeling that it's not quite so smart after all, or that the audience isn't expected to be smart enough to figure it all out. Perhaps when Mssrs. Helgeland and Hanson are standing at the podium, trophies in hand, they'll realize what they've accomplished.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 L.A. stories: 7.
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