L.A. Confidential

So back in the mid 90's, we had Entertainment Tonight playing in Finland for a while for some reason. I don't know why as most of the movies they showed on it wouldn't be coming to Finland for a while and some wouldn't make it there at all. But I remember once they had a promo for a horror movie that from the clips they showed, made me think that it would be the next Texas Chain Saw Massacre and probably the best movie ever! And then they showed another promo for some lame 50's cop movie that just couldn't be good. Made by some guy who hasn't really made a name for himself and well, it had the guy from The Usual Suspects and Seven, but that's it. Wrote it off instantly.

Well, eventually the movies came out in Finland. The horror movie ended up being I Know What You Did Last Summer, memorable only for...I forget, but it probably had something good in it. And the 50's cop movie? One of the best movies of the 90's. I have no idea how I could have been so very wrong.

L.A. Confidential is more than a sum of its parts. Directed by Curtis Hanson, whose movies before this one included A River Wild and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Cast had Kevin Spacey, who was quite hot in Hollywood thanks to his recent Oscar win, but other than that, who were those guys? Guy Pearce? Russell Crowe? Australians playing Americans? Inconceivable!

But it all works out beautifully. Adapting from a novel by James Ellroy, Hanson and co-writer Brian Helgeland have streamlined a book that many considered unfilmable into a modern classic. From frame one you can see the movie is a labour of love for everyone involved. Everything about the movie feels authentic. And the best thing is that everyone in the movie feels like a real character. It really is a testament to the enourmous talent around this movie, from Ellroy to the screenwriters to the cast for making the movie feel like we're actually watching something happening in the 50's.

Well, except for that one exception. Kim Basinger's Lynn Bracken. For a role that won her an Oscar, she doesn't really do that much with it. I suppose you could argue that her performance is elevated by how stellar everyone else is, but that just makes her stand out like Ronald McDonald at a goth club. Could be that the award was given as a consolation prize to LA Confidential in a year where Titanic took home 11 statues. And she doesn't look anything like Veronica Lake.

Other than Kim Basinger, I can't find a single thing wrong with this movie. I keep praising the screenplay, which justifiably won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, but it is just that good. I'm sure they're reading this script at screenwriting schools on a textbook how to adapt a book into a screenplay. Jerry Goldsmith's score fits the movie like a glove, as it should, as he's a veteran of noir music, having done Chinatown's music back in the 70's.

L.A. Confidential didn't make a lot of money when it opened. In fact, I Know What You Did Last Summer ended up overgrossing it. There was a pilot for a TV show based on the movie, with Kiefer Sutherland in the Kevin Spacey role, but it was never picked up. The pilot is available on the collector's edition DVD/Blu-ray and to be honest, it's rather horrible.

Curtis Hanson followed L.A. Confidential with Wonder Boys, a brilliant and underseen comedy starring Michael Douglas and Eminem's 8 Mile, never really reaching the highs of L.A. Confidential. Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for the overrated American Beauty and seems to enjoy smaller movies and roles these days. Guy Pearce isn't as big of a name as one would hope considering his brilliant work here and in Memento, but he was last seen in The King's Speech, so things are good for him as well. Russell Crowe has become a huge name since this one and will probably be seen as the main character, the love interest and the antagonist in the next Ridley Scott movie.

L.A. Confidential is one of the smartest movies to come out Hollywood in the last 20 years. So if you haven't seen it yet, put it on your rental queue. And if you're playing L.A. Noire currently, see this movie and you'll see how much the game owes to the movie. My score for L.A. Confidential: 10/10