Not What It Seems

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2007)

Nothing is what it seems, says the tagline for this movie. So, lets look at that for a moment. Some call this movie a film noir for the nineties, and with good reason. It's a story without any good guys, set in a 1950's world where crime and corruption are a way of life, with plenty of night scenes and scenes in the rain, so, aside from the fact that it's in color, it *looks* like a film noir.
But, this movie doesn't have a femme fatale. Oh, it has a pretender for that title, but somewhere about two thirds of the way through this movie, Lynn Bracken, gorgeous and worldly but jaded hooker, played wonderfully by Kim Basinger, says this:
Lynn Bracken: I see Bud because I want to. I see Bud because he can't hide the good inside of him. I see Bud because he treats me like Lynn Bracken and not some Veronica Lake look-alike who *bleep* for money.
No woman who sees the good inside a man can be a femme fatale, because a femme fatale never sees any good inside a man; they're only interested in the bad. So, forget this movie as a modern day film noir. It seems like one, but it is not what it seems.
Nor is anything else in this movie what it seems. It's impossible to say more without spoiler warnings, because no matter what I say, the very act of talking about this movie gives away some of its surprises. But, let me say just a word about each of the characters.
Lynn Bracken - we first see her as a high class, uncaring whore made to look like Veronica Lake, but by movie's end, she'll morph into someone we never expect.
Bud White - we first see him as a brutal, sadistic, amoral cop, whose idea of justice is planting or faking evidence to insure the guilty are punished.
Captain Dudley Smith - who says all the right things, and does all the wrong ones. Or is it the other way around?
Ed Exley - smarmy, weaselly, facile, disingenuous cop on the make, trying to dig out from the legacy of his policeman father, killed in the line of duty. In a world of disgusting, unlikable people, I disliked him the most.
Jack Vincennes - if Bud White is this movie's Mark Fuhrman, then Jack Vincennes is its Joseph Wambaugh: celebrity cop, consultant on a police television show that looks suspiciously like Dragnet, flashy dresser, who pays for his clothes and his extravagant lifestyle with money received from bribes.
As the movie unfolds, each of the three cops is working on a particular case that is personally important. To solve that case, each of the three must help the others solve theirs in exchange for the support of the other two. In the end, and I hope I'm not spoiling too much by saying this, they learn as do we that they were all working on the same case.
This is masterful storytelling, each plot-point slowly and inexorably linked to the others to form a cohesive, sordid world of corruption, manipulation, betrayal, graft and murder. It is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell and Kim Basinger give the performances of their careers. A solid 9 out of 10.