L.A. Confidential

Starring Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Kim Basinger

Does the phrase “trouble in paradise” ring a bell? Do you consider lines like “Just the facts ma’am” or “Thank you for the assistance, ma’am” tiring clichés? Look further, because this film will make you forget all of those cliché-ridden Dragnet teleplays, as you’ll start thinking that this was their source material. L.A. Confidential is a smart, well written, well acted, and well directed crime-drama, whose only vice lies in the fact that many people won’t see it until it gets nominated for handfuls of Oscars. For those of you who only enjoy watching the best of the best, this one is it. I can guarantee, based on the mutual opinions of a majority of critics, that nominations for best picture and director, along with numerous acting nominations, are not out of its reach.

This film is a thinking film so filled to the brim with numerous subplots and intricately written character relationships that any attempt to summarize it would do it injustice. It’s a story about cops, drugs, mobsters, duplicitous blondes and tabloid journalism. Sound familiar? This is the basic plot description of film noir. Notable director Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino) sums up the genre nicely in a recent New York Times article (September 26, 1997): “It created an image of the world . . . because of its brooding nature, because of its sense of fatalism. [The plot] is all in the mood and atmosphere. In film noir, the plot is never sewn up too tightly. Most of these films touched a chord; they were about descending into a labyrinth where anything can happen, including the death of the protagonist.” The specific plot of this film revolves around the death of drug kingpin Micky Cohen in Los Angeles, along with the succession of murders that result from some unknown individual’s particular interest in acquiring the franchise of the deceased. In comes the police department, a crew of mostly unredeemable souls. They are so far removed from the true image of a cop, that any movement towards the route of pure intentions would be met by awkwardness. It was well put by one of the characters: “Don’t start doing the right thing boy-o, you haven’t had the practice.”

The characters are very clear cut. Kevin Spacey plays Jack Vincennes, a popular narcotics cop, who answers to the calls of Sid Hudgeons (played by Danny DeVito), the local tabloid journalist, who offers him money for the “Jack Vincennes retirement fund” by having him bust criminals for the stories that he follows with his press entourage. Spacey gets involved in the investigations of officers Bud White and Ed Exley, played by unknowns Guy Pierce and Russell Crowe, respectively. These two are such contrasting personalities that when they aren’t at each other’s throats, they define the game of “good cop, bad cop” to such perfection, you’d have thought they invented the idea. Other casting includes James Cromwellb as Dudley, a wise, experienced police captain, and Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken, the obvious femme fatale.

Films like these shouldn’t be virtual wonders to the audience. To the average eye, everything works. Nobody seems to look to why the elements mix so well. The casting of a group of relatively unknown actors (with the exceptions of DeVito, Basinger, and rising stars Spacey and Cromwell) works for a reason other than helping a low budget film get off the ground: it provides suspense. If the cast list included Harrison Ford or Sylvester Stallone, we’d all know that neither of them would come to any real harm during the course of the story. This is why new actors are easy fair game to the twists and turns of the plot (and boy, does this plot have them). This film also includes the best duo you could ever find: a good plot and interesting characters. The film’s script is directed with clockwork and precision; there’s not a moment wasted. Every scene is included for advancing the plot or developing a character. The films score kicks in at the right moment to provide tension with the rumblings of a tuba or a trombone; not to just add generic sounds that “should be there.” Everything works.

The most interesting part of the film was the acting. The performances were top notch, and for a reason: the script developed the characters to the point where they could exist outside of the film. That, to me, is the best part of a film. When relationships between characters are so well developed or familiar, they can transcend the situations of the films themselves. Case in point: The relationships between Ray Kinsella and his father in Field of Dreams was so powerfully formed that I can easily make a case and say that the movie wasn’t about Kevin Costner’s love for baseball; it was about the relationship between a father and a son. The actors in this film are lucky to work with a script like this. They don’t play the parts of detectives or journalists; they play the parts of people. It appears that the actors worked on this idea, which is why they didn’t offer clichéd performances. What stunned me in this film was the fact that the actors played out who they were to a point of uniqueness. There may be five different cops in the film, but they don’t play “cops.” Kevin Spacey was supposed to be a popular cop, so he played his cop like he was a Hollywood star. Russel Crowe played a tough cop with a touch of honesty, so he had the chance to show it. Even Danny DeVito was able to shine in his performance as a sleazy journalist, because every time he got a dirty story, he smiled like a kid who ate his first piece of candy. The actors played people, not roles. This is what separates the hackneyed from the fresh.

Another surprising part of this film was that even the director and writer were virtually unknown. If I was to tell you that director Curtis Hanson previously directed second rate thrillers like The River Wild, and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and that writer Brian Helgeland’s previous credits include Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Assassins, you’d be quite surprised. It makes no difference, though, because a film like this makes you forget all your troubles, even the fact that you’ll never see another film like this in a long time.