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Hollywood; the name alone immediately conjures up images of the cinematic glamour that the world's largest film industry has created for over a century now, and no other time is more synonymous with that glamour than the Classical era, when the blockbusters were larger than life itself (and in Technicolor!), the world's biggest stars were being sold to the public with an assembly line-efficiency, and the towering, monolithic studio system reigned supreme, and without question.


However, beneath this paper- thin surface of glamour lay an ugly underbelly, one where multiple starlets were pressured into having abortions, sexual harassment was viewed as just another cost of doing business (and still is, to a certain degree), and organized crime ran rampant across the not-so-angelic city, and in 1997, Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential had the unflinching honesty to shine a spotlight on not only the long-dead cockroaches of mid-century L.A., but also the contemporary scandals that still plagued the "City Of Angels", creating what is quite possibly the finest work of neo-noir that the titular town made during that decade in the process.


Adapted from James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, Confidential's ensemble-based plot is driven primarily by three members of the LAPD; Bud White, a menacing, hair trigger-tempered officer who brutally pummels wife-beaters in his "free time", Jack Vincennes, a cocky, paparazzi-hounding narc, and Ed Exley, an embarrassingly straight-laced, goody two shoes sergeant who finds himself hopelessly alienated within the department, due to his eagerness to take a stand against the brutal, illicit methods of his fellow officers, refusing to adhere to the code of silence that has silenced so many police scandals over the years.


However, in the wake of a brutal botched robbery turned all-out bloodbath at a local diner, one that turns out to be even more insidious than it initially appears, the paths of all three men will become irrevocably tangled, as they chase a series of tantalizing clues, untrustworthy prostitutes, and a bloody trail of bodies as they pile up all over Tinseltown, uncovering a seemingly endless series of conspiracies and corruption that leads them all the way back into the dark heart of the department itself.


Admittedly, like many other works of film noir, the plot of L.A. Confidential is fairly complex and convoluted, but, while I do feel some of the moments of exposition here could've been handled in a bit more of an elegant manner, for the most part, Hanson and screenwriter Brian Helgeland do a strong job of juggling the various sub-plots, weaving a knotty, multi-threaded tale in a fairly coherent manner, and trading off perspectives between the various main characters as the paths continually intersect, as their individual investigations eventually merge into one, a process that's all the more compelling to watch given the fundamental strength of their vivid, three-dimensional characterizations, whether it be the way that Vincennes' self-centeredness and hunger for publicity (as seen in his gig moonlighting as an advisor for a Dragnet-knockoff called "Badge Of Honor") belies his underlying passion for justice, how Ed's rigid insistence on following the rules begins to bend when he realizes that he'll never solve this case doing everything strictly "by the books", or how Bud's initial image of being a mindless thug with an obsessive "hobby" of hurting men who hurt women was brought about by a childhood of helplessly witnessing his father beat his mother (culminating in her murder after he was left chained to a radiator for three days).


In a film where everyone has a dark secret lurking somewhere in their past, he's the most haunted of them all, which ties into the way that L.A. Confidential's excels not only by drawing historical context from the real-life sins of Los Angeles past, but of present and future as well; obviously, the film's plot is driven by the vacuum left in the local underworld by the arrest of real-life crime lord Mickey Cohen for tax evasion in 1951 (just like Capone, because were you expecting Hollywood to be original?), but, since the film itself was released when it was, it also serves as a cold splash of water, harking back to the racial tensions that have historically haunted the LAPD, not just during the "Bloody Christmas" era of the 50's (which a fictionalized version of actually figures into the film's plot), but as well of the contemporary examples of institutional corruption, brutality, and racism that rocked the department throughout the 90's, in the forms of the Rodney King beating, or the fiasco that was the OJ trial (which makes the quick cameo in the film by former chief Daryl Gates all the more ironic), as well as reminding us of the wave of sexual misconduct scandals in the Weinstein-era, due to the unfortunate presence of Kevin Spacey, and his character's involvement in a sub-plot involving a young, gay actor, which has given the film an unexpectedly long-lasting political relevance in the decades following its release.


Finally, Confidential is great simply in the way that it revitalizes its well-worn genre with its quippy, razor-sharp dialogue, pacing that knows exactly when to crackle along, and when to pump the brakes and let us just soak in the rich, cynical atmosphere of underlying corruption, and the way the film balances its tributing of old-school noir with its melodramatic, tumpet-heavy score, and usage of familiar tropes like the femme fatale (provided here in an Oscar-winning turn from a superb Kim Basinger), while also revitalizing it by forgoing the shadow-drenched black-and-white cinematography that defined the genre during its classical period, in favor of a brighter, more naturalistic lighting scheme, lending the film a bracing sense of you-are-there immediacy, and preventing it from feeling like some nostalgic museum piece. All in all, L.A. Confidential is one of the best film noirs to be made since the end of the style's classical era, and the greatness on display here is one secret you won't want to keep off the record, on the QT, or very "hush-hush" at all.

Hollywood; the name alone immediately conjures up images of the cinematic glamour that the world's largest film industry has created for over a century now, and no other time is more synonymous with that glamour than the Classical era, when the blockbusters were larger than life itself (and in Technicolor!), the world's biggest stars were being sold to the public with an assembly line-efficiency, and the towering, monolithic studio system reigned supreme, and without question.


However, beneath this paper- thin surface of glamour lay an ugly underbelly, one where multiple starlets were pressured into having abortions, sexual harassment was viewed as just another cost of doing business (and still is, to a certain degree), and organized crime ran rampant across the not-so-angelic city, and in 1997, Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential had the unflinching honesty to shine a spotlight on not only the long-dead cockroaches of mid-century L.A., but also the contemporary scandals that still plagued the "City Of Angels", creating what is quite possibly the finest work of neo-noir that the titular town made during that decade in the process.


Adapted from James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, Confidential's ensemble-based plot is driven primarily by three members of the LAPD; Bud White, a menacing, hair trigger-tempered officer who brutally pummels wife-beaters in his "free time", Jack Vincennes, a cocky, paparazzi-hounding narc, and Ed Exley, an embarrassingly straight-laced, goody two shoes sergeant who finds himself hopelessly alienated within the department, due to his eagerness to take a stand against the brutal, illicit methods of his fellow officers, refusing to adhere to the code of silence that has silenced so many police scandals over the years.


However, in the wake of a brutal botched robbery turned all-out bloodbath at a local diner, one that turns out to be even more insidious than it initially appears, the paths of all three men will become irrevocably tangled, as they chase a series of tantalizing clues, untrustworthy prostitutes, and a bloody trail of bodies as they pile up all over Tinseltown, uncovering a seemingly endless series of conspiracies and corruption that leads them all the way back into the dark heart of the department itself.


Admittedly, like many other works of film noir, the plot of L.A. Confidential is fairly complex and convoluted, but, while I do feel some of the moments of exposition here could've been handled in a bit more of an elegant manner, for the most part, Hanson and screenwriter Brian Helgeland do a strong job of juggling the various sub-plots, weaving a knotty, multi-threaded tale in a fairly coherent manner, and trading off perspectives between the various main characters as the paths continually intersect, as their individual investigations eventually merge into one, a process that's all the more compelling to watch given the fundamental strength of their vivid, three-dimensional characterizations, whether it be the way that Vincennes' self-centeredness and hunger for publicity (as seen in his gig moonlighting as an advisor for a Dragnet-knockoff called "Badge Of Honor") belies his underlying passion for justice, how Ed's rigid insistence on following the rules begins to bend when he realizes that he'll never solve this case doing everything strictly "by the books", or how Bud's initial image of being a mindless thug with an obsessive "hobby" of hurting men who hurt women was brought about by a childhood of helplessly witnessing his father beat his mother (culminating in her murder after he was left chained to a radiator for three days).


In a film where everyone has a dark secret lurking somewhere in their past, he's the most haunted of them all, which ties into the way that L.A. Confidential's excels not only by drawing historical context from the real-life sins of Los Angeles past, but of present and future as well; obviously, the film's plot is driven by the vacuum left in the local underworld by the arrest of real-life crime lord Mickey Cohen for tax evasion in 1951 (just like Capone, because were you expecting Hollywood to be original?), but, since the film itself was released when it was, it also serves as a cold splash of water, harking back to the racial tensions that have historically haunted the LAPD, not just during the "Bloody Christmas" era of the 50's (which a fictionalized version of actually figures into the film's plot), but as well of the contemporary examples of institutional corruption, brutality, and racism that rocked the department throughout the 90's, in the forms of the Rodney King beating, or the fiasco that was the OJ trial (which makes the quick cameo in the film by former chief Daryl Gates all the more ironic), as well as reminding us of the wave of sexual misconduct scandals in the Weinstein-era, due to the unfortunate presence of Kevin Spacey, and his character's involvement in a sub-plot involving a young, gay actor, which has given the film an unexpectedly long-lasting political relevance in the decades following its release.


Finally, Confidential is great simply in the way that it revitalizes its well-worn genre with its quippy, razor-sharp dialogue, pacing that knows exactly when to crackle along, and when to pump the brakes and let us just soak in the rich, cynical atmosphere of underlying corruption, and the way the film balances its tributing of old-school noir with its melodramatic, tumpet-heavy score, and usage of familiar tropes like the femme fatale (provided here in an Oscar-winning turn from a superb Kim Basinger), while also revitalizing it by forgoing the shadow-drenched black-and-white cinematography that defined the genre during its classical period, in favor of a brighter, more naturalistic lighting scheme, lending the film a bracing sense of you-are-there immediacy, and preventing it from feeling like some nostalgic museum piece. All in all, L.A. Confidential is one of the best film noirs to be made since the end of the style's classical era, and the greatness on display here is one secret you won't want to keep off the record, on the QT, or very "hush-hush" at all.