Review: L.A. Confidential (1997)

L.A. Confidential

Rating

Director

Curtis Hanson

Screenplay

Brian Helgeland, Curtis Hanson (Novel: James Ellroy)

Length

2h 18m

Starring

Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Matt McCoy, Paul Guilfoyle, Paolo Seganti

MPAA Rating

Review

In the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles, a darkness creeps through the police department. L.A. Confidential brings audiences into the seedy underbelly of 1950s L.A. with a fictionalized look at the notoriously corrupt LAPD.

At the core of the tale are three young actors with full careers ahead of them. Guy Pearce, making his Hollywood debut, stars as Ed Exley, a career detective who lives under the long shadow of his father but who works hard to embody the department’s attempt to root out corruption. In doing so, he finds himself at odds with others who aren’t so amenable. Fellow Australian Russell Crowe finds a role he can finally show audiences what he can do as Bud White, a violent cop whose specialty is interrogating and beating men who abuse women. The last member of the triumvirate is Kevin Spacey as Jack Vincennes a fame-seeking cop who focuses on bringing down Hollywood players. Add in Danny DeVito as a tabloid journalist, Kim Basinger as a surgically altered prostitute who looks like Veronica Lake, and James Cromwell as the police captain and you have a stacked cast of impressive stars.

Writer-director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Brian Helgeland adapt James Ellroy’s pulp novel with great skill telling several interwoven narratives that expose corruption, venality, and murder with compelling twists and turns that will leave the audience riveted until its closing frame. Pearce is his best since The Adventures of Priscilla and Crowe has never been better. Spacey was strong at the time but one wonders looking back now how much of that performance was his own personality coming out or if this role influenced his future actions.

DeVito was given a rare non-comedic role he could excel in and makes the most of his trashy scribe while Basinger is the film’s weakest element. As the film’s femme fatale, her job is a relatively easy one. She is to cast concern over the proceedings about her loyalties and culpability. She may float across the film like Gene Tierney or her doppleganger Lake but her performance is plain and forgettable, blending into the background of most of her scenes in spite of Dante Spinotti trying to frame her in the perfect soft lighting to accentuate her bright red lips and sultry pout. In the end, nothing in her performance works and by the conclusion of the film, it’s difficult to recall what exactly she brought to the film that better actors couldn’t have done better.

Many filmmakers have tried to evoke the sense of tension and seedy depravity that films noir once put forward and while that’s not entirely because of the use of color, that’s a contributing factor. Yet what Hanson and Spinotti have done is create that chiaroscuro palette giving the film that dark, haunted feeling while allowing the vibrancy of the southern California aesthetic to create the chromatic disparity that elevates the film.

L.A. Confidential is a highwater mark for neo-noir and has not even been approached in terms of quality since. Although it wasn’t the best film of 1997, it was easily one of the best of that year and the decade entire.