L.A. Confidential (1997)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Three detectives in the corrupt and brutal L.A. police force of the 1950s use differing methods to uncover a conspiracy behind the shotgun slayings of the patrons at an all-night diner.
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19 films that influenced L.A. Confidential
What critics say influenced L.A. Confidential
(A similar approach to another time period, the 1950s, powered Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, another superior color noir effort.)
One of the reasons "L.A. Confidential'' is so good, why is deserves to be mentioned with "Chinatown," is that it's not just plot and atmosphere.
Critics are already comparing “L.A. Confidential” to movies such as “Chinatown” and “Pulp Fiction.”
It helps that they're working with a gifted cinematographer (Dante Spinotti), a composer with deep roots in this genre (Jerry Goldsmith of "Chinatown") and a great script.
A big critical hit at the last Cannes Film Festival, it has been compared repeatedly to "Chinatown," Roman Polanski's classic 1974 L.A. noir (written by director Hanson's onetime mentor Robert Towne).
A lot of people have been comparing "L.A. Confidential" to "Chinatown," but, aside from the obvious noir detail and the setting (and the great, piano-driven music by "Chinatown" composer Jerry Goldsmith), the only thing the two movies really have in common is that absolutely nothing about the crime is what it initially seems to be.
There's also something of The Big Sleep in director Curtis Hanson 's unfashionably pre-postmodern tour de force of early-'50s atmosphere, tight plotting, snappy dialogue, and sharply edited action—you know, all those quaint virtues from the old noirs.
This is one of those classic films like "The Big Sleep" where the murder mystery is so complicated it doesn't make much sense for most of the film, but you are happy to go along for the ride because of the style, flair, atmosphere, romance, acting and dialogue.
He has the molls, the cynicism and the corruption of a Bogart movie; in fact, "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon" echo loudly throughout.
As much as "L.A. Confidential" invites comparison to "Chinatown" and "The Big Sleep," Hanson's movie doesn't reach that standard.
"L.A. Confidential" even contains a parody of a 1950s television cop show, Jack Webb's "Dragnet," that's fresher than most of "Cop Land."
Among those disciplined are Sergeant Bud White (a beefy and brush-cut Russell Crowe in a crisp Jack Webb likeness), a brutish shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type with a thing for wife beaters, and "Hollywood Jack" Vincennes (a suavely cynical Kevin Spacey, whose light touch gives L.A. much of its oomph), a "celebrity cop" who serves as technical adviser to a Dragnet-like TV show -- when he's not setting up dope and sex busts of movie stars for scandal-sheet editor Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito doing gleeful smarm).
He has the molls, the cynicism and the corruption of a Bogart movie; in fact, "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon" echo loudly throughout.
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(Nor is he Curtis Hanson, who did this movie right the following year with L.A. Confidential.)
With a script that pays homage to the films of the '40s and '50s and may remind some viewers of the likes of Chinatown, L.A. Confidential proves that every period piece thriller doesn't have to go the way of Mulholland Falls.
Last year director Lee Tamahori took a stab at this kind of heavy, character-driven, post-war detective story with "Mulholland Falls" and flopped.
And few believed in a period crime movie at a time when they seemed to be box office poison (Mulholland Falls, anyone?).
She screens This Gun for Hire in her house for her clients, so they can see the resemblance.
From 1940s classics like "Out of the Past" (1947) through the likes of "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955), "Point Blank" (1967), "Chinatown" (1974) and "Body Heat" (1981), each decade has taken its own kind of brooding look at what goes down at the dark end of the street.
From 1940s classics like "Out of the Past" (1947) through the likes of "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955), "Point Blank" (1967), "Chinatown" (1974) and "Body Heat" (1981), each decade has taken its own kind of brooding look at what goes down at the dark end of the street.
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From 1940s classics like "Out of the Past" (1947) through the likes of "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955), "Point Blank" (1967), "Chinatown" (1974) and "Body Heat" (1981), each decade has taken its own kind of brooding look at what goes down at the dark end of the street.
From 1940s classics like "Out of the Past" (1947) through the likes of "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955), "Point Blank" (1967), "Chinatown" (1974) and "Body Heat" (1981), each decade has taken its own kind of brooding look at what goes down at the dark end of the street.