Great

Rating: 9/10 (21 June 2012)

L.A. Confidential is a great film not because it is revolutionary, in terms of style nor approach, but because it is so uniformly excellent in every area. It is one of those films that stands in counterpoint to the director as auteur, although surely a different director would have made a different film. The point is that the material is so good that it's one of those can't miss films. It also exemplifies that the most revolutionary thing in art is greatness, especially sustained greatness. Any work of art, and any artist, has to be judged in this manner, since it is the only objective way to evaluate things. Notions like revolutionary or daring are too subjective. What was revolutionary often becomes clichéd. True originality resists easy mimicry and subsequent triteness.
A good example of this comes from two earlier films that this one is most compared to: Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). While both of these are good films, neither is great. Chinatown is far less complex than L.A. Confidential, and almost wholly dependent upon lead actor Jack Nicholson's abilities. Quick- other than John Huston, name me an actor from that film. See? It's also a far less realistic film, and far more dependent upon style. Even more style-dependent is Pulp Fiction, a film almost devoid of realism. In fact, even though it is based on a novel, whereas Serpico was based upon real life events across the continent, and two decades later, L.A. Confidential is really an extension of that Al Pacino film's exploration of evil. Both show that all the cops are criminals of one sort or another. Only degree of criminality is in question. In both films, the leads win, but pay for victory with extreme loss. This is why Curtis Hanson's film is better than the two films it's most compared to by critics, and holds up well against the more realistic drama of Serpico. It's also why, compared to the violence, especially in Pulp Fiction, that in this film is never gratuitous. It always is at a minimum, within the bounds of character and circumstance, and advances the story, even if just in a small way. Also, the fact that all the cops, even the 'good ones,' are criminals, is something just not seen in most films of the last few decades of Right Wing hagiography of all who wear uniforms.
When this film came out, in 1997, it was one of the few films that I ever saw twice in a theater. After having seen it once with a female friend, I recommended it to other friends, and went to see it again with them. In watching it a couple of times over the years, and for review, it is one of those films that has many things in its backgrounds, many moments that become 'Aha' moments upon rewatch, and make the viewer re-evaluate just what the film is doing and why. This is the definition of depth. Yes, the film is not as existential as Ingmar Bergman's Shame, nor is it as innovative as Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, nor does it present reality as closely and achingly as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, but its uniform excellence, and ability to do even its genre moments well (I recall pumping my fist and going, 'yeah!" when Exley shoots Smith in the back at my first viewing), and recast clichés as something different (bright lights noir), are among the many reasons this film rises to greatness. I would not go so far as the hagiographizing Andrew Sarris, in casting all crime films as pre- and post-L.A. Confidential, because the film does as much to celebrate film noir as it does to recast it, but it certainly is one of the best Hollywood films of the last thirty years or so. It is also the high point of director Curtis Hanson's rather pedestrian career, and the only one of his films to ever come near and surpass greatness, another argument that auteurism is not the only way to get a great work of cinema made for, without the contributions of those mentioned, this film would likely still have been a good one, but great? I doubt it. Regardless, L.A. Confidential is a great film, one of the best crime drams ever filmed. See it. Or else.