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L.A. Confidential
Crime Drama / English / 1997
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
#8 on the original MoFo Top 100 90s Movies list and the first one I still have yet to see.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Another crime drama, this time with a focus on the cops.
Exley is an up-and-coming cop in the LAPD who is set on becoming a detective, however he is bluntly informed by Captain Dudley that he simply isn't a corrupt enough character. It's sort of like the "Detectives" or "Homicide" department in this movie are treated like the Vice department in L.A. Noire. Everyone's a dirty cop.
Fortunately, even with the exception of Exley who doesn't maintain his clean streak, cops are not all presented as entirely evil in this movie and most of the cast is presented as having their own unique roles and personalities, and dabbling in corruption to varying degrees.
Even so, it is almost cartoonish how blatantly the police bribe, torture, and murder people in this movie. They're really just a street gang with the veneer of legitimacy. And I'm sure that's probably the point and at some points in history this may have been true, but it's really a tiresome comparison echo'd by people who just want an excuse to hate cops.
Thankfully, Exley offers a more virtuous perspective into the environment tempered by his own personal ambitions to be like his father, but he's only one of about 3 perspectives we follow.
We also follow Russell Crowe as "Bud", who investigates the killing of his former partner and has a relationship with a hooker affiliated with a prostitution ring that the movie centers around. We also follow another Kevin Spacey character, who's much more likeable this time around and mainly just gets his kicks by spinning arrest stories for Danny DeVito.
LOTS of big names in this movie.
Anyway, we brush along all three of these characters as suspicions around a mass murder start to arise, suspects are collected, interrogated, escape, and killed as even more discrepancies allude to something big.
All of this is buried in the overwhelming amount of proper names, theorized motivations, and relationships between characters. Much can be intuited by what occurs onscreen, but I had to Google character names like 3-4 times just so I was correctly remembering who everyone was referring to.
I didn't remember Spacey's last name, I didn't remember Farmer Hoggett's first name, I didn't know whether this "Pratchett" character was the millionaire pimp or someone else entirely...
I even had to look up who "Rollo Tomassi" was, which is another fictional name give in a crime drama starring Kevin Spacey and serves as the twist reveal.
Eventually Captain Dudley murders Spacey's character, Spacey mutters "Rollo Tomassi" with his "valediction", and Dudley later repeats it to Exley who only knows the name because he made it up to characterize his father's killer... for some reason.
Thus it is revealed that the police department's corruption goes all the way up and by some sequence of events I can't be ****ed to comprehend, Dudley is also possibly responsible for Bud's former partner's death over some heroin operation they had on the side.
I was happy that Bud was somewhat redeemed by the end of the movie, he seems like just another corrupt cop who does as he's told, but his personal investment in his former partner motivates him to join Exley in doing something righteous for once... meanwhile Exley becomes just a little bit crooked.
That would be all fine if it weren't for the single MASSIVELY cringe-inducing scene in this movie, which is when Exley randomly starts snogging Bud's love interest.
It comes completely out of the blue and I facepalmed so ****ing hard when I saw it because it was not only totally stupid and unnecessary, but it also guaranteed that there would be conflict between Bud and Exley later, which there was. God ****ing dammit.
That is the worst part of the story it is so bad; let's just throw a wrench into the gears because we need a little more drama and we can't be asked to think of anything more creative than Exley randomly loses all inhibitions and throws himself at this otherwise usleless character!
Main Girl, more like Tertiary Character Girl, seems to serve no meaningful purpose in the movie other than to be the **** in a """noire""" and to propel this stupid conflict that's ultimately resolved in a couple minutes anyway.
Other than that, the worst part of this whole movie is that it just jabbers on and on about shit I struggle to care about. I understand, like The Usual Suspects, they're trying to lay a groundwork for the information they reveal later, but there's so much of it, loads of proper first and last names, and by the time we actually do make the connection between key events in the story, I'm like...
Couldn't you have sped this up a bit?
By the end of the movie, I was enjoying myself, but the start to midway point almost took more patience than I was willing to give it.
Final Verdict: [Okay]
L.A. Confidential
Crime Drama / English / 1997
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
#8 on the original MoFo Top 100 90s Movies list and the first one I still have yet to see.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Another crime drama, this time with a focus on the cops.
Exley is an up-and-coming cop in the LAPD who is set on becoming a detective, however he is bluntly informed by Captain Dudley that he simply isn't a corrupt enough character. It's sort of like the "Detectives" or "Homicide" department in this movie are treated like the Vice department in L.A. Noire. Everyone's a dirty cop.
Fortunately, even with the exception of Exley who doesn't maintain his clean streak, cops are not all presented as entirely evil in this movie and most of the cast is presented as having their own unique roles and personalities, and dabbling in corruption to varying degrees.
Even so, it is almost cartoonish how blatantly the police bribe, torture, and murder people in this movie. They're really just a street gang with the veneer of legitimacy. And I'm sure that's probably the point and at some points in history this may have been true, but it's really a tiresome comparison echo'd by people who just want an excuse to hate cops.
Thankfully, Exley offers a more virtuous perspective into the environment tempered by his own personal ambitions to be like his father, but he's only one of about 3 perspectives we follow.
We also follow Russell Crowe as "Bud", who investigates the killing of his former partner and has a relationship with a hooker affiliated with a prostitution ring that the movie centers around. We also follow another Kevin Spacey character, who's much more likeable this time around and mainly just gets his kicks by spinning arrest stories for Danny DeVito.
LOTS of big names in this movie.
Anyway, we brush along all three of these characters as suspicions around a mass murder start to arise, suspects are collected, interrogated, escape, and killed as even more discrepancies allude to something big.
All of this is buried in the overwhelming amount of proper names, theorized motivations, and relationships between characters. Much can be intuited by what occurs onscreen, but I had to Google character names like 3-4 times just so I was correctly remembering who everyone was referring to.
I didn't remember Spacey's last name, I didn't remember Farmer Hoggett's first name, I didn't know whether this "Pratchett" character was the millionaire pimp or someone else entirely...
I even had to look up who "Rollo Tomassi" was, which is another fictional name give in a crime drama starring Kevin Spacey and serves as the twist reveal.
Eventually Captain Dudley murders Spacey's character, Spacey mutters "Rollo Tomassi" with his "valediction", and Dudley later repeats it to Exley who only knows the name because he made it up to characterize his father's killer... for some reason.
Thus it is revealed that the police department's corruption goes all the way up and by some sequence of events I can't be ****ed to comprehend, Dudley is also possibly responsible for Bud's former partner's death over some heroin operation they had on the side.
I was happy that Bud was somewhat redeemed by the end of the movie, he seems like just another corrupt cop who does as he's told, but his personal investment in his former partner motivates him to join Exley in doing something righteous for once... meanwhile Exley becomes just a little bit crooked.
That would be all fine if it weren't for the single MASSIVELY cringe-inducing scene in this movie, which is when Exley randomly starts snogging Bud's love interest.
It comes completely out of the blue and I facepalmed so ****ing hard when I saw it because it was not only totally stupid and unnecessary, but it also guaranteed that there would be conflict between Bud and Exley later, which there was. God ****ing dammit.
That is the worst part of the story it is so bad; let's just throw a wrench into the gears because we need a little more drama and we can't be asked to think of anything more creative than Exley randomly loses all inhibitions and throws himself at this otherwise usleless character!
Main Girl, more like Tertiary Character Girl, seems to serve no meaningful purpose in the movie other than to be the **** in a """noire""" and to propel this stupid conflict that's ultimately resolved in a couple minutes anyway.
Other than that, the worst part of this whole movie is that it just jabbers on and on about shit I struggle to care about. I understand, like The Usual Suspects, they're trying to lay a groundwork for the information they reveal later, but there's so much of it, loads of proper first and last names, and by the time we actually do make the connection between key events in the story, I'm like...
Couldn't you have sped this up a bit?
By the end of the movie, I was enjoying myself, but the start to midway point almost took more patience than I was willing to give it.
Final Verdict: [Okay]