Gangster films
have many things in common, but gangster films set in sunny Los Angeles have a
special flavour of their own. It doesn’t matter if the main characters are
gun-totting criminals or crooked cops, if the setting is Tinseltown then celebrity
culture will be a factor. In the Curtis Hanson directed L.A Confidential (1997) a cop moonlights as an advisor for a popular
TV show about cops, a publisher of a tabloid magazine sets up celebrity
arrests, and a pimp has a group of prostitutes surgically altered to look like
Hollywood actresses. Throw in a femme fatale into the mix and you have one
delicious piece of film noir.
If I recall well
this was a movie I saw on HBO with my parents a few years after it came out
while we were living in South America. The content matter was somewhat mature
for my age at the time, but if anything I had more trouble following the storyline
since this is an over two-hour movie with lots of characters, plot twists, and
betrayals. Like The Dude said, there are a lotta ins, lotta outs, a lotta
what-have-yous. However I did understand this was a very morally grey story
featuring characters doing bad things for slightly good reasons.
Based on a book
by James Ellroy, the story focuses on essentially three main characters and
many other supporting characters in 1950s Los Angeles. First off you have the
by-the-book cop, sergeant Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), who wants to live up to his
father’s reputation even if it means going after other cops. This goes against
the way of Wendell “Bud” White (Russell Crowe) who has a habit of beating or
killing suspects, especially if they hurt women. Then you have the wildcard,
sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) who doesn’t mind becoming a celebrity with
flashy cases and works on a TV show in his spare time. On the side Vincennes
also gives information to Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), who publishes a celebrity
tabloid called Hush-Hush, in order to
be in the spotlight.
The three cops
end up getting involved in thick web of corruption and murder involving the
criminal empire of gangster Mickey Cohen (Paul Guilfoyle), a prostitute (Kim
Basinger) who is made to look like actress Veronica Lake, and corruption within
their own department. It is all set off by a massive shootout at a café called
the Nite Owl, a very noir name for an establishment. Exley catches up with the
supposed killers, earning him the nickname “Shotgun” Ed in the process and
making him a hero in the department. However things are of course much more
complicated than what they seem.
For their own
separate reasons, Exley, White, and Vincennes dig deeper into the case, and
start to uncover lies, corruption, and rotting corpses. There is solid
character development along the way, from the idealistic Exley realizing things
aren’t always black and white, to Vincennes deciding to do some actual police
work. There is a good scene between the two when Exley asks Vincennes why he
decided to become a cop. The man honestly can’t remember. They also talk about
Rollo Tomasi, the name Exley gave to his father’s unknown killer, which later becomes
a major plot point that helps identify the movie’s surprise villain.
Amid all the
shootings and twists, there is also time for a love triangle of sorts between
the violent White, the straight arrow Exley, and the sultry Veronica Lake
lookalike Lynn Bracken. This is one of Basinger’s most memorable roles, which
has her playing a woman who knows she is beautiful and doesn’t have a hard time
making men fall for her. When interacting with White and Exley she says exactly
the right thing to get the same result even though she is dealing with two very
different cops.
With its very
thick script, written by Hanson and Brian Helgeland, L.A Confidential can be revisited multiple times in order to fully
understand who was doing what and who was lying to whom at what time. It is
also very interesting to see it again 20 years later as it was the big
Hollywood breakthrough for Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, but sadly bittersweet
since Hanson died last year. As far legacies go, directing a classic in the L.A
noir genre is not bad at all.
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