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Cromwell (from left)* Pearce, Crowe end Space? play detectives in f asMnoviftg LA. Confidential,A nod to classic cinemaTHE FALL movie season officially opens with the debut of this smart, good-looking crime thriller set in the city of fallen angels.In L.A. Confidential, high-priced call girls get plastic surgery to look like screen sirens — Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth. And the movie itself recreates old Hollywood’s movie star glamour and tawdry sin with effortless verve and tons of retro style. (Everyone looks swell, the cars are fat and shiny, and the soundtrack swings.) But thankfully the imitation doesn’t stop there.There’s also a nostalgic nod to classic cinema in the attention paid to screen-writing — remember dialogue and character and plot? Writers Brian Helgoland and Curtis Hanson (who also directs) have taken James Ellroy’s tough-talking but labyrinthine 1991 novel and turned it into an intelligent, full-bodied, complex film. Don’t step out for popcorn because the fast-moving, overlapping plotllnes won’t let you. The pay-off for your diligent attention will be that very rare thing — an ending that really satisfies, without any cheap tricks.The ensemble cast is flawless,anchored by two intense young Aussies, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. Crowe plays Bud White, a cop whose integrity comes straight fromMoviesAlisonGillmorLA. Confidential■ Starring Russell Crowe■ Portage Place, St. Vital■ Restrictedirkickk out of fivethe gut, which means he’ll put a gun down a suspect’s throat if he thinks it will protect a rape victim, Pearce plays the “college boy cop” Ed Exley, a cool, cerebral political animal who has “the eye for human weakness but not the stomach for it,” as his chief (James Cromwell) points out.The two men square off over the investigation of a multiple murder in an all-night coffee shop, and over call-girl Lynn Bracken (played by Kim Basinger, who combines va-va-va-VOOM beauty with a feeling performance). But it's not their differencesthat come out; the film is shrewd enough, and interesting enough, to look for their similarities instead.The two men are at the core of the story, but they draw life from the vivid portrait of ’SOs L.A. that surrounds them, from tainted DA’s to hopeful hicks looking to get discovered.Danny DeVito is a smarmy reporter for the tabloid Hush-Hush, setting up Hollywood idols and then cheerfully knocking them down with rigged drug busts (for his all hop-head edition”) and sexual scandal.Kevin Spacey, always compelling, isJack Vincennes, a cynical celebrity cop who likes to make big collars in the glare of flashbulbs, and who lives for his role as technical adviser to the TV show Badge of Honour. (On TV the LAPD are clean-cut do-gooders, compared with the racist thugs and drunksJack actually works with.)By setting up the city of dreams as u lost paradise, by juxtaposing the glittering illusions or Hollywood with the sweet stink of corruption and failure, L.A. Confidential says a lot about a crucial turning point in post-war America. And by confronting moral ambiguity,instead of running from it as manymainstream movies do, it reminds us that a good white-knuckled, hard-boiled crime story can deal with serious things too.
Newspaper Details
Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA
Fri, Sep 19, 1997
Page 34
Full Page
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USA 18 Oct 2021
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