A day in the lives  and deaths  of LA citizens...

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2007)

As Paul Newman said in Cool Hand Luke (1967), just before his character was killed off, "What we've got here is failure to communicate..."
You could say that is THE theme of this well-crafted drama of life in La-La Land. And, yet, as you follow the lives of six or seven disparate couples, and how many interact during the course of thirty-six hours, the writer/director, Paul Haggis, brings a true sense of what it means to communicate, for good and for evil, and how what is said doesn't always mean what is said. Human communication is complex, and all too often, too many factors get in the way to proper listening -- really listening to what somebody is trying to tell you...
Aye, there's the rub, as the bard once said.
So, there is no main story  there are many different vignettes, many of which directly crisscross  or crash into  each other, however fleetingly. And, as the viewer, you see just what happens when two or more people fail to understand the significance of what they see, what has happened, and what they think they know. The twists and turns are delicious (I'm not talking about driving, okay) and there are some surprise moments that just might take your breath away... (The whole narrative is way too episodic to convey in words, in a review such as this; I could write 5000 words on this film, but that would bore you.)
So, that's another theme: nothing is ever as it seems. There's always something more, something that might be hidden, unknown, unrealized. Hence, the consequences of getting things wrong are all too well played out by the great cast: gritty in its realism, shocking in the results, and all too true to life...
Of special mention is the stark contrast between the racist cop, John Ryan (Matt Dillon), and the new, idealistic recruit, Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillipe) as they work through their differences on the job. At first, it seems that Ryan has no redeeming qualities, so much so that the young Hansen manages to get reassigned, away from Ryan, after lodging a complaint about him for harassing a black couple. And yet, Ryan provides one of the most traumatically uplifting moments in the whole movie with a selfless  and hugely ironic  act of heroic bravery, while his ex-partner Hansen  flushed with his own self-importance  comes face to face with his own fundamental inadequacy, as a human being, in the worst possible way. But it's all just another day on the job...
Some critics might say that too much of the narrative depended upon coincidence. But life is chaotic, the universe thrives on it at all levels, and we all know that strange coincidences have happened to each of us. You wouldn't believe some that have happened to me, driving around the city I live in. Or, maybe you would?
Don Cheadle, as detective Graham Waters, is the one character that the camera follows the most. So, on that basis, I would say it's mostly about him, seeing as how the film starts and (almost) ends with him on the screen. In actual fact, however, Paul Haggis remains true to good narrative sense and starts and ends the film with similar events, in this case, a collision between two cars. These days, what better icon for a city is there, anyway?
Haggis has written and directed a film that owes much to Robert Altman, I think. Those who know the latter's work would tend to see that influence here also. As I loved most of Altman's movies, I found this one just as satisfying, if perhaps a little more jerky at the cuts and scene changes. But, I'm not complaining: this is movie making at its best, with a haunting soundtrack, and if you haven't seen and heard it, then I'd urge you to do so.
It's quite violent in parts, there are sex scenes, but all of it is in context; nothing in this narrative is gratuitous. It's how cities are -- it's how they are...