flowrs4ophelia | Film Review: "L.A. Confidential"

Okay, so this is a really old movie to be writing a review for, but allow me to explain what prompted me to do this.

I have a little group of film dork friends and a long time ago we got this silly idea to entertain ourselves during the summer by holding our own film festivals. They are basically movie parties that last three or four days in which we get to make our friends sit down and watch whatever movies we like whether the others like them or not, and then we get to praise or crucify each other's tastes. It was a lot of fun last summer, we're in the middle of doing it again this year, and it is likely to become an annual tradition within this particular circle of friends of mine.

Everyone usually prints out a program of some kind to hand out that lets everyone else know what they're in for (I posted the program of all the films I showed this year here on my regular journal). I began writing some little blurbs on each movie about why exactly I like them to include in the program booklet but decided it would be a waste of paper (nobody actually read the things front-to-back last year, unsurpisingly). I decided I would just pick a few to write reviews for andpost them on LiveJournal, and I threw in a word search on the last page of the program instead. So I milked my blurb for L.A. Confidential I'd already done and whipped this up. Whether or not I'll get around to writing reviews for any others, I'm not sure. I am thinking any practice for writing reviews will be good for me; some friends and I have a half-baked idea that we're going to start an online magazine, and if we did that then this is probably the kind of material that I would be contributing to it (when I'm too lazy to conjure some half-decent fiction, that is).

L.A. Confidential opens with colorful images of Los Angeles as a glamorous paradise of wide beaches, beautiful movie stars, and perfect all-American families. But as the character Sid Hudgens explains in his narrative over the opening credits, this is only what everyone is supposed to believe L.A. is. Hudgens (Danny DeVito) is the publisher of a tabloid magazine called Hush-Hush who acts as the storyteller for most of the film. His job is to uncover the unpretty truth about celebrities’ secret lives and expose it to the world, and in a way that is just what this movie does: it lifts off the attractive image of L.A. that we see during the opening credits to reveal the dirty, corrupt world it is underneath.

Based on a noir novel by James Ellroy, the film is set in 1953 but has the kind of story that would not have been popular in the 50’s when America was in a cheery state of post-war optimism. There is never a clear line drawn between right and wrong; the police officers the film focuses on have varying and mixed-up ideas of justice, and some have no care for the idea of justice at all.

In two leading roles, Russel Crowe and Guy Pearce play perfect opposites as cops with very different ways of handling their jobs. Big and brutish-looking Bud White (Crowe) is seen by most other officers as a “mindless thug,” but he wants to do investigations as a detective. Bud never hesitates to resort to violence, sometimes seems to take a sadistic pleasure in getting the chance to beat up criminals who deserve it, and is especially hard on woman beaters. At times completely disregarding the law or disobeying orders, he sees that one has to be a little bad to get any good done in a world as corrupt and unrighteous as the one he works in.

Ed Exley (Pearce), however, is a strictly by-the-book officer who wants to live up to his legendary cop father without getting his hands dirty. Completely unintimidating with a thin physique and glasses, he seems like someone who should stay behind a desk in an office rather than be out chasing armed criminals. When he tells Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) that he’s thinking about being in the detective bureau, he’s warned that he doesn’t have the stomach for it. If he’s not willing to beat a confession out of a suspect or shoot a guilty man in the back to prevent a lawyer from allowing him to get away with his crime, Smith tells him, “For the love of God, stick to assigments where you don’t have to make those kinds of choices.”

Then there is the much more careless Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), a shamelessly selfish kind of cop who loves his job for what it does for him. On the side of his regular duties, he is the technical advisor on a Dragnet-like TV show called Badge of Honor and often takes bribes from Sid Hudgens for setting up arrests of famous people so Hudgens can get good stories for his magazine. To the public he’s a heroic and flashy Hollywood cop; in real life he arrests TV stars for possession of marijuana and then sneaks their stash into his pocket.

When a strange mass murder occurs at a coffee shop, the LAPD quickly assumes it was just a robbery and three Negroes who were seen with shotguns in a park on the same night are the obvious suspects. But there may be more to this case than meets the eye. One of the victims happens to be Bud White’s ex-partner, and another is a woman he recognizes from seeing outside of a liquor store shortly before the massacre who looks remarkably like Rita Hayworth. When Bud goes digging into the case he discovers that the woman was part of a ring of hookers made up to look like movie stars that is run by Pierce Patchett (David Straithairn), a millionaire who is probably living off of more illegal activity than just prostitution and therefore politely cooperates when Bud comes to ask him some questions. His investigations then bring him knocking on the door of one of his hookers, a Veronica Lake look-a-like named Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger). He later comes back to her door off duty and is let inside free of charge.

Eventually something about the cafe homicide case doesn’t sit right with Exley either, even after it is allegedly solved. At the same time, Vincennes is the only one bothered by a recent murder of an actor that was barely looked into before the case was filed away. When the two decide to put their heads together, they find that both cases are somehow connected to Pierce Patchett’s business and may be related to each other. Everything that is connected starts to come together, and as the curtains hiding the truth are all pulled away there are certainly some big surprises.

L.A. Confidential was arguably the most critically acclaimed film of 1997. When Oscar time came it became forgotten in the shadow of a gigantic ship called Titanic, but Kim Basinger did take home a statue for her performance, deservingly. Though not a major one, Lynn Bracken is an enticing and memorable character who can switch from being a seductive femme fatale to being sweet and motherly and is, in a way, a symbol of everything the film is about. She is as powerful as any other character without ever holding a gun or even speaking in a raised voice.

To me, what makes this film is its ability to surprise you not just with plot twists but with simple revelations that show how frivolous easy assumptions can be. Almost every character has some facade that must be lifted away in order to see the real thing. In Vincennes's first scene, a woman asks him why the cop in Badge of Honor doesn't act like him if he works on the show for the purpose of authenticity; he answers, "He's just the television version. America isn't ready for the real me." Lynn sleeps with several men every day in an extravagant room fit for a real movie star, but when she's alone she sleeps in a smaller bedroom decorated with plants and mementos from her home town. And more than one character at some point has to admit, "Bud White isn't as dumb as I thought."

As Vincennes, Exley, and White all do their parts in the story to get to the bottom of these murders, there is both redemption and loss of innocence. When warned by Smith about the difficult decisions that come with being a detective, Exley says confidently, "I don't have to do it the way you or my father did it." There is a delightful kind of irony to be found in how wrong he ends up being.