Review: L.A. Confidential A movie review by David Sunga
Directed by: Curtis Hanson
Written by: Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathaim, and Danny DeVito
Ingredients: 1950s Los Angeles; femme fatale; ambitious but naïve detective; corruption; big complicated city; politics; would be actors and actresses lured by tinsel town only to become hookers; darkness, mazes and layers of events left unresolved until the end
Synopsis: This noir drama portrays the coming of age of two opposing young cops in 1950s Los Angeles (a place where corruption in the law enforcement system is the rule rather than the exception). Australian actor Guy Pearce plays naïvely honest young L.A. policeman Ed Exley who is ambitious for advancement, while fellow Australian Russell Crowe plays his moral and physical opposite, Bud White, a complex macho cop who does what he is told (which in 1950s L.A. means turning a blind eye to racism, planting evidence, and police brutality). Scrawny Exley is politically motivated but idealistic about the treatment of suspects and wants to buck the system, while White follows orders because he wants to see criminals physically abused since his mother was beaten and murdered by his father when he was a child. Kevin Spacey plays a third protagonist, jaded celebrity cop Jack Vincennes, who advises a schmaltzy TV show called ‘Badge of Honor.' On the take, Vincennes has forgotten the idealism which had originally caused him to join the force.
The movie's first big event features a police brutality scene against Mexican-Americans in order to showcase the corruption of the era, the personalities of the three cops, and how they despise each other. In the meantime, mobsters are being murdered, and not long afterwards a retired cop and five victims are massacred at the Nite Owl Café. The murder is solved, and the apparent perpetrators are gunned down by the police. Over time and for separate reasons each of the three protagonists is drawn by events in their own lives to reinvestigate different aspects of the supposedly ‘solved' case. The main mob boss Mickey Cohen is in prison. So who could be responsible for the recent spate of murders of mobsters and retired corrupt cops in California and why? The answer changes both Exley and White.
Other subplots involve a missing stash of heroin, a sleazy tabloid editor who pays and gets paid to set people up to commit crimes and subsequently take the fall, and the rivalry between two cops for the affections of a beautiful celebrity lookalike hooker (Kim Basinger).
L.A. Confidential is the Warner Brothers movie adaptation of author James Ellroy's book.
Opinion: Be careful you don't pause in the middle of the movie to go to the drinking fountain. If you miss just one small word of the last scene where Exley explains the situation, this movie is so intricate you might lose your place.
The story is good and rich with overlapping themes, characters, and plot strands that seem unrelated at first but tie together somewhat successfully by the movie's end. In addition characters change orientation from more corrupt to less or from less corrupt to more, depending on the character and his stomach for the events that unfold. In other words this Warner Brothers movie adaptation of James Ellroy's novel is just as deep and engrossing as the book.
In terms of action, all the gunfights are good, including the big battle at the end. But there's a definite snag in the movie's pace after the Nite Owl case is solved when it seems like characters are not strongly motivated to do anything until the Nite Owl case starts being reinvestigated. A subplot about heroin remains confusing even after the movie ends.
All of the actors and actresses in this film did an absolutely marvelous job in fleshing out their onscreen characters. Russell Crow shines as the macho cop.
Reviewed by David Sunga
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