A Totally, I Mean TOTALLY Overrated Movie!

Rating: 5/10 (29 June 2006)

This movie is full of too many negative messages, inconsistencies and stereotypes to be rated anywhere near being a 'classic.' Two police officers are awarded at the end of the film - one gets the beautiful girl, and the other gets his second police medal - and you are left wondering, "huh?" The officer who gets the girl is a complete thug of a police officer with complete disdain for proper police procedures and due process. His method of choice when seeking information and dealing with disappointing situations is to get physical or to abuse and threaten whomever he is dealing with - citizens, his girlfriend or even fellow cops. The film awards him the girl (a high-class hooker) after he established a 'relationship' with her while he was working on a murder case in which she is significantly involved.
The other officer who receives the police medals is suppose to be the films moral compass. During the film he speaks up on the transgressions and immorality in the LAPD, but we too find him later making intense physical sexual advances (he actually literally rapes her)at the high-class hooker who has already been sleeping with his thug cop coworker. At the end of the film, Mr Moral Compass then proceeds,in summary judgement style, to kill another officer -unnecessarily shooting him in the back - after the latter cop had been apprehended for murdering other police officers and aligning himself with the local MOB drug trade. This repeated issuance of summary judgments at the barrel of a gun in this film with no retribution is disturbing.
Also disturbing is the fact that in this film of 1952 Los Angeles, the only Black faces seen in the entire film are three criminal youths who, after being rounded up and interrogated, admit to the senseless rape of a Mexican girl. With aid from an unverified and false police statement from the rape victim, the three youth then are also charged with conducting the multiple diner murders which are at the heart of the movie's story. After somehow escaping police custody, the three youths are later summarily gunned down in a violent police raid at their residence. A fourth unnamed older black man is found watching TV in one of the rooms in the house where the rape occurred, but he is for no reason summarily murdered by the thug cop before he is even questioned on the extent of his involvement. Of course, there is no accountability for this murder, as the officer is later seen riding off in the sunset with the pretty girl at movies end.
Sure its "only a movie," and after all, 'LA Confidential' is all about corruption and vice rampant in the LAPD during this period. However, no "classic" presents all these inexplicable, incongruous and unresolved issues without even attempting to address them. The oversight is too obvious. The 1950's nostalgia, slick production values and sharp wardrobes can't hide these missing elements of the film. It's about as visible as the Grand Canyon.