L.A. Confidential
Everything is suspect... Everyone is for sale... And nothing is what it seems.
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.
Wokeness: 20%
Overall Score: 100%
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User Submitted Reviews
DigitalEntombment
Confidently Well Done
I re-watched LA Confidential after a decade+ away and it feels like a completely different film. It reminded me what used to be great about dramatic movies. Every character goes through multiple emotional and dramatic evolutionary arcs, their history, psychological baseline, and motivations are explored several times throughout the film, even side characters like Sid and Buzz Meeks.
Many of the key story beats are perversions of expectation based on these established baselines:
* Bud failing to kill Ed in revenge for his sleeping with Lynn
* Exley's moral failure in the last scene
* DA Loew expecting Exley's moral virtues to protect him from Bud
* Sid being too trusting for a change and ending up dead.
* The entire denouement, which I will not spoil.
These perversions happen not because of some middlebrow Knives Out-esque need to conquer the audience's preconceived notions, but because the characters are people reacting to the events that happen as they occur with no omnipotent morality police cataloging the rise and fall of every prostitute. The protagonists and antagonists are changing because circumstance is forcing them to adapt or join the growing pile of bodies. Even the main plot is filled with beats about what looked like minor or insignificant characters that turn the entire paradigm of the plot's power hierarchy upside down.
The bad guys is not the bad guys, the good guys are not the good guys. There is a layer of political commentary that was probably relevant in the 90's that is no longer relevant now, but the middle of act three is no less coherent because of that subtext (the shotgun shooters).
The story links together episode after episode of seemingly unrelated daily drips of crime and violence with our collection of characters until it all comes swirling together in a whirlpool of cultural criticism weaving the corruptible influences of police and city politics, paparazzi culture, and show business evils into a thoroughly well written and well acted tableau of refreshing art that I honestly forgot existed.
Created: 04-18-2024
