A Buttkicking Confrontation between Crowe and Pierce

Rating: 10/10 (29 September 2012)

This film brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the 50's and especially the Los Angeles of that era. The Power Gap created by a jailed Mob Boss "Mickey Cohen" causes a series of murders of all of Cohen's Lieutenants, which we get to see as Danny DeVito aka "Sid Hudgens" from "Hush-Hush" magazine narrates the graphic violence.
Russell Crowe is "Bud" White, a two-fisted cop who can't stand seeing women abused, due to his witnessing his mother murdered by his father when he was a child. But Bud himself has a streak of Brutality. After dealing with an ex-con, soon to be con who was beating his wife on Christmas Eve, he and his partner Dick Stenzland make a liquor run for the "office" booze party - White meets "Veronica Lake/Lynn Bracken" with an immediate spark. Out in the parking lot, White sees another young woman with a broken nose in the back seat of a car containing millionaire Pierce Morehouse Patchett (David Strathairn). In the middle of Whites' inquiries, out pops "Buzz" Meeks (Darrell Sandeen) who White easily beats the crap out of. Stenzland tells White "He used to be a Cop"
This intro only seems like it bears little relation to the story as it develops, but in fact it is close to the heart of the story: And we see why as we watch it unfold.
Ed Exley is the son of an honored LA Detective, who may have risen in the ranks using unethical means, who had been murdered by "Rollo Tomasi" - "The Guy who Gets Away with It." Ed however, will not take the gratuity offered to him by "Jack Vincennes" (Kevin Spacey), as he comes in with a wholly set-up marijuana bust (by Hudgens, for publicity) of two hapless kids. Vincennes is technical adviser to a "Dragnet" style TV show "badge of Honor" and he lives for doing it.
What begins as a seemingly harmless New Year's Eve party ends up with cops beating the crap out of two Hispanic guys in Jail who had shot and killed one cop. They could not wait for the Press to leave the building and the whole thing is splashed all over the papers. Heads have to roll, and the only cops who come forward are Exley, who willingly plays Whistleblower, and Vincennes, who was coerced into testifying, or lose his job on the TV show. The "rolled head" ends up being White's partner Dick Stenzland, 1 year from retirement, which infuriates the entire department against Exley. But Exley was promoted to "Detected Lieutenant" - Because it was his idea on how to get Vincennes to testify.
These two scenes are very important to the continuity of the film. As a chapter in James Ellroy's Quartet of novels about LA, many of the elements were in fact based on real people or events. The beating of the two Hispanic prisoners really happened, and according to a few Hollywood personalities from the past, there really was an agency similar to "Fleur-De-Lis" that hired prostitutes that resembles famous Hollywood Starlets. And there actually was a power vacuum left by the imprisonment of real-life gangster Mickey Cohen.
Curtis Hanson uses these real elements to tell James Ellroy's tale of corruption in the mid-50's. It is a tapestry of complex, interconnected events which will eventually bring three detectives: Ed Exley, Bud White, and Jack Vincennes to the inescapable conclusion of who really is Rollo Tomasi, and Rollo is closer to them than we could possibly imagine.
There is one MacGuffin in this film: The Briefcase with Mickey Cohen's stolen Heroin. In some movies, the crime is solved by "Following the Money" - In This case, the crime is solved by Following the Heroin.
This film should have won an Oscar for the gritty realism portrayed, and it survives under the scrutiny of multiple viewings.