Three cops from very different worlds find their trajectories colliding when a power vacuum in the underworld triggers a series of events that shake the city of angels.
Bud White (Russell Crowe) is an enforcer, a tough guy with a badge and a beef with women beaters. His partner Dick Stensland (Graham Beckel) tolerates this because he’s got his own vices, so when a simple trip to get liquor for the department Christmas party includes a stop off at a paroled wifebeater’s (Allan Graf) house to stop him pounding the hell out of his spouse (Precious Chong) and a second issue at the liquor store when he misinterprets the black eyes and bandages on lovelies Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) and Susan Lefferts (Amber Smith) as signs of abuse from their man Pierce Patchett’s (David Strathairn), well, he’s only too happy to sit in the car and watch the show.
Detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is on the other side of town, dancing the night away at a party for the television show Badge of Honor he works as an official advisor for. It’s there that tabloid journalist Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) gives him an opportunity to make a buck busting a couple of aspiring actors for using the pot one of Hudgens’ guys sold them. Sid makes a fortune off this kind of cheap copy, and Vincennes is happy to take the cash Hudgens is ponying up. He rolls into the station with the potheads to find a party underway and the desk sergeant reluctant to take a ten spot offering from Hush-Hush magazine. Ah well. Time to book the baddies and get a drink.
Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) has just been promoted to Sergeant, and he’s got desk duty and the opportunity to plan mother hen for the guys who’re getting drunk upstairs. As it turns out, a reporter (Bob Clendenin) and his cameraman (Lennie Loftin) are on the scene to catch a few publicity shots, take a cheery seasonal statement from Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) before he leaves for the night, and otherwise spend a silent night with the LAPD.
However, everything changes when the booze flows freely and a pair of Mexicans suspected of beating up two cops show up in the holding cells. It’s time for a little payback, a little abuse. Ed cannot stem this avalanche, and it put into a holding cell when he tries. Drunk cops beat the shit out of the Mexican men, and are caught in the act by the journalists, turning the event into a front page headline: Black Christmas.
Well, that starts a flood of problems. The Police Chief (John Mahon) and DA Ellis Lowe (Ron Rifkin) want to keep the image of a New Los Angeles, with its caring and incorruptible police force so they need to make a public spectacle of cleaning house, but they are unable to find officers who will testify . It’s Ed Exley who devises a scheme that will work—targeting guys who’s pensions are secure, Stensland who even Captain Dudley Smith paints as a disgrace—and offers to work with the men in exchange for a Detective Lieutenant position. He’s also the man to figure out the angle to coerce Jack Vincennes into helping out. It’s a scheme that works, and soon enough Exley is catapulted into the coveted role … as well as being despised by his fellow officers.
However, it’s this position that gives him the opportunity to make a name for himself by investigating a robbery that turned homicidal at the Nite Owl Diner. And this crime draws together investigations Vincennes and White are involved in, revealing a stinking mess of corruption and crime under the shiny illusion of sunshine drenched LA. What do a dead homosexual actor, girls cut to look like movie stars, tough guy cops rousting visiting hoods in a sleazy motel, a new highway project, rumors of a sizeable quantity of heroin in search of a buyer, and two man shooter teams dispatching incarcerated crime boss Mickey Cohen’s lieutenants have in common? Exley, Vincennes, and White soon discover their lives and souls are on the line. They will have to get to the bottom of these mysteries if they’re to find the justice they yearn for. Curtis Hanson helms a gorgeous and gritty excursion into brightly lit crime cinema, a period piece that tackles matters of corruption, abuses of power, and three unlikable antiheroes’ search for justice in an ugly, ugly world with his adaptation of James Ellroy’s labyrinthian novel, L. A. Confidential (1997).
Ask a crime film fan for recommendations from the 90s, and you’ll get a slew. Ask for the best of the best recommendations, and fans will generally fall into a few camps. Carl Franklin made two extraordinary features that decade—One False Move (1992) and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)—which are all too often overlooked. For many fans, the first one that comes to mind is Heat (1995). For me, It’s L. A. Confidential.
Drawing its inspiration from James Ellroy’s novel, the adaptation is less interested with replicating the plot of that book than in cherry picking scenes and elements and holding true to the characters. For example, a shootout at the Victory Motel taking place in the prologue doesn’t involve the three main characters in Ellroy’s novel; it’s the finale in the film and features two of our three leads. Still, the spirit is alive and well, and the way the film captures the characters, the period, the grit and grime, the sleaze and tabloid qualities and crrrazy shit Ellroy is so fascinated with composing is a terrific complement to what’s found in the prose. The book and the film might be separate animals, but their Venn Diagrams have serious overlaps, nevertheless.
Humorously, Ellroy championed the film when it came out. He praised the directions and writing, calling it brilliant. Since Hanson’s death, he has changed his tune, recanting his previous views completely. There’s a lengthy interview with author Michael Connelly during his tour for his 2021 novel Widespread Panic that is a hoot to watch. Well worth checking out.
Nevertheless, the script from Hanson and Brian Helgeland employs the three man structure from the book to nice effect. There’s a twistiness to the material, an ease with keeping the viewer somewhat in the dark at the opening about how all this is supposed to come together. But the stories are compelling ones, the seeming episodic qualities pretty riveting, so when we get into the coming together bits later on there’s a lovely sense of payoff to setups we never realized were there. Second and third viewings of the flick show how that seeming looseness in the beginning was all a ruse, an illusion. The story is rather tight.
The performances are all top notch stuff. Crowe, Pearce, Spacey, Basinger, and the host of other actors (there are almost eighty speaking parts) are perfectly cast, giving their all, delivering some lovely moments. The decades since the film’s release have seen individual careers rocket into stardom, maintain, fall off the radar, or plummet into notoriety—it’s hard to see Kevin Spacey’s smirking delivery of “The world isn’t ready for the real me,” without drawing a connection to the actor’s later controversies. Still, this is a film that finds everyone bringing their A-game.
The cinematography from Dante Spinotti eschews stylized lighting choices and familiar elements from classic film noir for a more naturalistic lighting. The camera moves and makes the audience a witness to these events. While L. A. Confidential might not look like noir, it’s nevertheless got the beating heart of a noir picture. The disparity of haves/have nots, the corrupt power structure in place that seems to protect real criminals from prosecution, the need for detectives to work both with and outside the system to reveal the filth and horror … all of that is the stuff of noir.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score is a moving one, employing horns as a thread throughout. It keys into the characters, their emotions, the energy of their scenes together. While it might not be as visceral and immediate a work as, say, the music he wrote for Alien (1979) or Total Recall (1990), it is nevertheless a lovely, polished, perfectly realized component in the picture.
L. A. Confidential is one of those crime films that speaks to me and it’s a film that I return to every few years, always finding something new to mull over. It’s a brutal picture, richly realized, with outstanding performances, gorgeous aesthetics, and a confident direction. The piece weighs in on some heavy matters, while also peeling away LA’s veneer to show the writhing maggots at work just out of sight beneath the glossy surface. A difficult watch and certainly not for the squeamish, but a rewarding experience for viewers with testicular fortitude or a love of the grittiest, grittiest crime pictures imaginable.
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L. A. Confidential is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions.
Next, we will take a look at a wintery crime/action picture from director John Singleton. A quartet off fostercare outcasts return to their Motor City roots to look into the murder of their foster mom. Soon enough, they discover the reason the cops are dragging their feet on this crime is a matter of corruption and human evil. Can they find a little justice, or will they wind up sacrificed scapegoats? Four Brothers is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions.
Writing for “Off the Record, On the QT, and Very Hush-Hush: L. A. Confidential (1997)” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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