l.a. Confidential
REVIEW
When I was child I hated going to school and would often fake being sick so I could stay home with my mom. Back then I wasn’t allowed a television in my room but when I was sick she would make an exception. I would spend all day laying in bed, flipping through the channels and would usually start out my morning watching “Wheel fo Fortune” but by mid-afternoon daytime tv consisted of Soap Operas and Ricki Lake. Completely uninterested in those options, I stumbled upon “Turner Classic Movies.” As a kid the thought of watching a black and white film seemed like torture but before each film a host would give some history about the film. I became fascinated with the stories of classic Hollywood and how the films were made and how older audiences had received them. It was in these days away from school I began my education of the Film Noirs of the Golden Age of Hollywood. I discovered such films as “Double Indemnity,” “The Maltese Falcon,” and “Sunset Boulevard.” I became fascinated with these stories and their style. Then in 1997 I saw a film that brought everything I had learned to love about these movies to a new level of appreciation. That film was “L.A. Confidential.”
This film was a gorgeous, modern film noir that took place in Los Angeles during its Golden Age. The story was dark and fed off the glamour of the era. The characters pulled me into their corrupted world and never let me go until the bloody conclusion. This film is damn near perfect. I have now seen it countless times and it just gets better and better with every viewing. In the 20 years since it was released it has aged beautifully. This is a film so well crafted as a film lover it goes with out hesitance that it would make it into one of my favorite films of all time. There are so many elements to it that just work and my favorite is that this story takes place in the shadows cast by the shine of Hollywood during a romanticized era in American history.
The 1950’s in America is typically thought of as a simpler, happier time. A time when neighbors talked and didn’t live in fear of one another, front doors were left unlocked, kids played outside until the sun went down and the pinnacle of entertainment was going to the movies. This story lifts off the rose colored glasses and and shows us a world of corruption, prostitution, racism and murder. Strip away the romanticism and leave the glamour of Hollywood and you are left with a beautiful dirty story filled with some truly unforgettable characters.
The three main characters of this film are L.A. cops coming from very different backgrounds pulled together to solve a horrific crime. They are played by Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe and all three characters could hold a movie of their own but combined into one story and this film became iconic. Kevin Spacey is magnetic playing Jack Vincennes a cop with an easy smile and an attraction to the limelight of Hollywood. He finds himself with a foot in both worlds and doesn’t realize, until it is to late, that he has mudded the waters of both. Guy Pearce plays Ed Exley a smart, ambitious, squeaky clean cop trying to live up to the reputation of his decorated father. Exley doesn’t care who he upsets as he plays the political game to move himself up the latter but finds himself on the wrong side of a cop played by Russell Crowe. Crowe plays, my personal favorite character in the film, Bud White. White is a brute cop who does most of the forces dirty work: if there is a suspect who won’t give up information White is the guy they bring in to beat it out of him. White also uses his fists to avenge the violence he saw his mother take by protecting any damaged woman he meets. He ends up falling for one these women and this where the heat of this film moves from steaming to boiling. We are introduced to Lynn Bracken a prostitute made to look like Veronica Lake and is played by Kim Basinger. Bracken is beautiful, you want to trust her damaged character but don’t know where she fits in the story and that makes her the perfect fem fatale.
This is a complicated story and not easy to follow on the first viewing. There are so many intersecting plot lines and characters woven through out. There are shocking twists and the conclusion is one of the most satisfying in cinema history. Seeing this film on the big screen is a memory I will cherish for a lifetime.
The success of this film is a real Cinderella story. Warner Bros. bought the rights to the James Ellroy novel soon after its publication but didn’t have much faith in the project. They hired Curtis Hanson to direct this film and at the time he was a mid-level director having made such films as “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “Bad Influence” and “The River Wild.” He worked closely with screenplay writer Brian Helgeland, who was best known for “Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master,” to bring this film to life. They decided strip the novel down and remove every scene that did not have the tree main cops in it and then work from there. They streamlined a book that some had been deemed unfilmable. Ellroy himself gave the two praise with the final result when he said “They preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main themes…Brian and Curtis took a work of fiction that had eight plot-lines, reduced those to three, and retained the dramatic force of three men working out their destiny.”
Warner Bros ended up backing out of making the film because Film Noir was considered uncommercial for modern audiences. Period films were also very expensive to make and Hanson also did not want to cast big stars. The script was then passed to New Regency Productions CEO Michael Nathanson, who loved it. The project was finally green-lit by company head Arnon Milchan. The film was still thought of as a risk and was only given a modest $35 million budget.
After the films release it became a massive success with critics and audiences. It went on to gross $126 million worldwide and was nominated for nine Academy Awards. The film won 2 Academy Awards; Kim Basinger won for Best Supporting Actress Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland won for Best Adapted Screenplay. This was the same year that “Titanic” dominated most of the award wins. The gamble paid off and still does to this day. Many critics have ranked it as one of the greatest films of all time and it currently sits at a 99% approval rating by critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 94% by audiences. It really is an amazing piece of filmmaking and the more time that passes it only seems to be gaining more praise. This film is a modern classic.
