Confidentially Speaking
L.A. Confidential Renews Film Noir

Hey there Hollywood hepcats. Your old pal Sid Hudgens here with a real treat for you. It's 1953 and no one has the low-down on Tinsletown like your fearless reporters at Hush-Hush magazine. The latest offering to the silver screen is a hot adaptation of the hard-boiled detective novel L.A. Confidential, by Kansas City resident James Ellroy. While many of our loyal readers may not be familiar with the big "C", let me assure you that the story is hot, the men are tough, and the women are beautiful.

It seems that no expense was spared to bring this story of police corruption in the City of Angels to the big screen. The cast is filled with veterans and rising stars including Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, and Danny DeVito.

L.A. Confidential begins in 1951, just before the Bloody Christmas incident which left many of our boys in blue hanging after the assault of several Mexican suspects. The only cop to emerge from the incident unscathed was golden boy Sgt. Ed Exley (Pearce) -- high time weenie and D.A. snitch. No surprise Ed is not the most popular guy in the precinct, despite his promotion to Lieutenant.

Among the city's finest who lost their jobs was Sgt. Dick Stensland ("Stens" to his friends). Stens got canned one year before he made his pension, but the old boy didn't seem too broken up about it. Maybe he had something special brewing the night he went to the Nite Owl.

You remember the Nite Owl Massacre, don't you loyal reader? The robbery attempt at an all-night diner in which six people were shot-gunned to death? A violent crime with hardly any clues that started with one of this town's biggest bad-guy shakedowns and ended in the arrest of three black kids whose car had been seen nearby that hideous night.

But all is not as it seems. There are those on the force who think there may be more to the Nite Owl than meets the peepers. My good buddy Jack Vincennes (Stacey), celebrity crimestopper and scourge of hopheads and junk fiends everywhere, has been looking down some dark alleys on his own. The Big V was reassigned to vice after the Bloody Christmas shakeup and his work there has put some procured porn in his hot little hands. Jack said there may be a connection between the street smut and the Nite Owl shootout, but he can't be sure.

Meanwhile, Stens' ex-partner Sgt. Bud White (Crowe) has traded in his erstwhile penchant for whipping up on wife-beaters in favor of a sweet dame named Lynn Bracken (Basinger). Word has it that this dish looks like Veronica Lake and works for millionaire Pierce Patchett in one of his less publicized endeavors. On top of her hustling, our blonde bombshell may be posing for compromising pictures with city councilmen and other influential individuals. These pretty pics are Pratchett's key to the city, if you know what I mean.

When White isn't lounging with luscious Lynn, he's putting his brain to work on the demise of his ex-partner. While the connections he has found link Bracken to Pratchett, he can't make the connection between the millionaire and the Nite Owl. Perhaps Stens' old boss, Capt. Dudley Smith, may have a tidbit or two he has yet to volunteer.

Such a great story demands brilliant acting. For my money Stacey, Pearce and Crowe played their roles perfectly. Stacey and Pearce pull their characters directly from the pages of L.A. Confidential. Although one who has read Ellroy's epic novel may have imagined Bud White as more of a bruiser, Crowe plays it with such ferocity one can forgive his small stature. DeVito shines in one of his juiciest roles in years, giving Hudgens a sleezeball mentality that is dead-on. Basinger is nice window-dressing, but she is obviously too old for the part. Her tired, heavily made-up face doesn't carry the young Bracken as far as she could go.

The screenwriters had the terrible task of trimming the plot-twists of L.A. Confidential to fit a two-hour timetable. To its credit, the movie -- while rewriting much -- borrows bits of dialogue directly from the book. It also manages to maintain the moxie of the mystery, even if more than the names have been changed to protect the innocent. While the book is filled with deep insights into the too-human cops in 1950s L.A., the movie has trimmed the detective work and time span of the novel in order to tell a simpler -- if watered down -- story.

If you are a fan of good fiction, do yourself a favor and read Ellroy's novel before you see the movie. The differences are telling, and the original is better. If, however, you just want to catch a crime caper at the city cinema, you couldn't ask for a smarter, sexier way to spend a Saturday night.

Remember, dear reader, you heard it here first -- off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.

MY RATING: 9 out of 10.

RATED:
RUN TIME: 130 min.

Confidentially Speaking L.A. Confidential Renews Film Noir

Confidentially Speaking
L.A. Confidential Renews Film Noir