HOLLYWOOD'S LAST GREAT FILM NOIR
"A movie bull's-eye: noir with an attitude, a thriller packing punches. It gives up its evil secrets with a smile. "
"L.A. Confidential" finished at No. 1 in a list of films shot in the last 25 years about Los Angeles culture.
In a poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times, Curtis Hanson's 1997 drama topped P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown." This means the year 1997 appears to have been vintage for Tinseltown at the movies: the top three films on the list all came
out that year.
1. "L.A. Confidential" (1997)
2. "Boogie Nights" (1997)
3. "Jackie Brown" (1997)
4. "Boyz N the Hood" (1991)
5. "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984)
6. "The Player" (1992)
7. "Clueless" (1995)
8. "Repo Man" (1984)
9. "Collateral" (2004)
10. "The Big Lebowski" (1998)
The opening scenes of "L.A. Confidential" are devoted to establishing the three central characters, all cops. We may be excused for expecting that they will be antagonists; indeed, they think so themselves. But the film has other plans, and much of its fascination comes from the way it puts the three cops on the same side and never really declares anyone the antagonist until near the end.
The first voice heard from the screen comes from the confiding, insinuating publisher of Hush-Hush magazine, Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito). He sets the tone: "Insiders" know the score and are getting away with murder. His most valued contact is Detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), the technical adviser on "Badge of Honor,' a "Dragnet"-style TV show. They set up celebrities or politicians in compromising situations, Vincennes breaks in to bust them and Hush-Hush gets the story.
Vincennes will be one of the film's protagonists. The other two cops are Officer Bud White (Russell Crowe), who believes in bending the law to enforce it, and Detective Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), a straight-arrow type whose self-righteous morality gets on the department's nerves. These three cops, so different from one another, all possess some essential quality of honor that draws them together in untangling the film's web of corruption.
The plot involves a series of crimes that take place in the early days of the new year. Associates of Mickey Cohen, the L.A. mob boss, become victims of gangland-style executions. There's a massacre at an all-night coffee shop; one of the victims is a crooked cop, and three black youths are immediately collared as suspects, although there's suspicion that someone else is behind the crime.
One of the best scenes takes place in the Formosa Cafe, a restaurant much frequented in the 1940s by unlikely boothfellows. Cops turn up to question Johnny Stompanato, a hood who may know something about the Cohen killings. His date gives them some lip. "A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker,'' Exley tells her, but Jack Vincennes knows better: "She is Lana Turner,'' he says with vast amusement.
"L.A. Confidential" is described as film noir, and so it is, but it is more: Unusually for a crime film, it deals with the psychology of the characters, for example in the interplay between the two men who are both in love with Basinger's hooker. It contains all the elements of police action, but in a sharply clipped, more economical style; the action exists not for itself but to provide an arena for the personalities. The dialogue is lovely; not the semi-parody of a lot of film noir, but the words of serious people trying to reveal or conceal themselves. And when all of the threads are pulled together at the end, you really have to marvel at the way there was a plot after all, and it all makes sense, and it was all right there waiting for someone to discover it.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-la-confidential-1997
Character Profiles: The Three Detectives
The heart of L.A. Confidential lies in its character dynamics. Hanson and co-writer Brian Helgeland brilliantly streamlined Ellroy’s massive web of characters into three distinct archetypes of policing:
Officer Wendell "Bud" White (Russell Crowe)
The Muscle with a Hidden Heart: White is a hulking brute who is used by the department as a physical enforcer. Haunted by witnessing his father beat his mother to death, Bud has an explosive, zero-tolerance policy toward men who abuse women.
Arc: Bud begins as a blunt instrument of violence but evolves into a genuine detective. Through his relationship with Lynn Bracken, he learns to see past appearances and realizes he has been manipulated by his superiors as nothing more than a hitman in a badge.
Sergeant Edmund J. Exley (Guy Pearce)
The Ambitious Legacy Cop: Ed is the son of a legendary, clean detective who was murdered. Highly intellectual, strictly "by-the-book," and wears glasses—marking him as an outsider among the blue-collar, rough-and-tumble cops. Ed is willing to testify against his fellow officers to fast-track his own promotion.
Arc: Exley starts as a self-righteous careerist who believes the law is absolute. As the conspiracy unravels, he realizes that absolute justice in a corrupt system requires him to get his hands dirty, culminating in his willingness to abandon bureaucratic protocols to survive and do what is right.
Sergeant John "Jack" Vincennes (Kevin Spacey)
The Hollywood Sleaze: Slick, charismatic, and vain, Jack serves as the technical advisor for the hit TV show Badge of Honor. He moonlights for Sid Hudgens, the publisher of the sleazy tabloid Hush-Hush, setting up B-list celebrities for drug or homosexual busts in exchange for kickbacks and publicity.
Arc: Jack has lost his moral compass to the allure of fame and easy money. When a young actor he set up is murdered, Jack’s dormant conscience reawakens. His tragic journey to rediscover why he became a cop in the first place serves as the emotional pivot point of the film.
3. Key Supporting Players
Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell): The patriarchal, softly spoken, but terrifyingly ruthless head of detectives. He preaches "containment" and asks his officers if they are willing to do "whatever it takes" to secure justice—a code phrase for extrajudicial violence and corruption.
Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger): A high-class call girl from Oregon who has been surgically altered to look like film star Veronica Lake. Working for the "Fleur-de-Lis" service (where girls are altered to look like movie stars), Lynn is highly intelligent, perceptive, and becomes the bridge between Bud White and Ed Exley.
Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito): The fast-talking, cynical narrator and publisher of Hush-Hush magazine. Sid represents the media's complicity in packaging the sleaze and glamour of L.A. for public consumption. "Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush."
Legacy and Critical Reception
Released in September 1997, L.A. Confidential was a massive critical triumph, holding an near-perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Oscar David vs. Goliath: The film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards. However, 1997 was the year of James Cameron's Titanic, which swept the awards. Despite this, L.A. Confidential won two highly prestigious Oscars:
Best Adapted Screenplay (Curtis Hanson & Brian Helgeland)
Best Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger)
Career Launcher: The film was instrumental in launching the American film careers of Australian actor Guy Pearce and New Zealander Russell Crowe, both of whom were relatively unknown to US audiences at the time.
