Three Cops Who Changed Their Minds

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2003)

SPOILERS...
The story of three cops who changed their minds. Guy Pearce begins as a coldly manipulative cop interested mainly in promotions. He winds up sanctioning the use of brute force in order to obtain what passes for justice in this movie. Kevin Spacey is sort of "affiliated" with the LAPD but his chief interest is in being technical adviser on a "Dragnet" show and getting his picture in the L.A. Times. He discovers that he has a sense of responsibility when a sympathetic young bisexual is murdered on his watch. Russell Crowe is an apparently mindless brutal thug who finds that love has made him vulnerable and that the instrumentality of anger has its limits.
Overall, it's an excellent film. The theme is similar to that of "Chinatown," in which Jack Nicholson, a brittle but basically decent representative of objectivity and order, discovers corruption in high places. "L. A. Confidential" isn't "Chinatown" (what is?) but it brims with the same irony and sense of dis-ease, although our identification with a single isolated human being is dispersed over a trio of flawed cops.
What a well-drawn flick. Curtis Hanson handles the direction competently, blessedly without the sort of dazzling special effects a viewer has come to expect from cop movies. There is plenty of action, but no car chases, exploding heads, or slow-motion deaths. In fact, all but two of the deaths take place offscreen. That's directorial bravery for you. Bring another Medal of Valor here.
The performances are about as good as they come. Danny DeVito is a tabloid reporter who speaks in headlines, liable at any moment to say something like, "What he needs is a snoot of coca-cola up the old schnozzola." (This is 1953, don't forget.) Kim Basinger is beautiful as a Veronica Lake lookalike but doesn't have too much of a chance to stretch her acting chops. Guy Pearce as the independent loner is the only character who gets my respect from beginning to end. He really BELIEVES in the cause, a hard charger, unfriendly though he may be. He also looks oddly like Arnold Schwarzenegger, especially odd since he was a body builder of sorts. I knew another body builder who was Schwarzenegger's body double in "Raw Deal" because he was a ringer. (Do all body builder have to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? I mean, aside from their glutes?) Speaking of body builders, Russell Crowe gets a lot of screen time in a dark brown suit speckled with what looks like bird droppings, perhaps the ugliest suit ever committed to film, with shoulders as wide as the central span of the George Washington Bridge.
Two of the performances are irreproachable. John Cromwell is the corrupt police captain. He plays the role chewing gum and exuding unpretentious Irish charm ("Call me Dudley.") while tempering the charm with what sounds like good-natured and sincere common sense advice. Underneath that, he's thoroughly rotten in every respect. And Kevin Spacey is perfect as the vain detective who knows his way around the show-biz part of L.A. and enjoys schmoozing with councilmen, celebrities, and the press. He's involved in the two most amusing scenes in the movie. The first involves an almost miraculous control of facial expression. He's called in for interrogation by his superiors and is asked to testify against some other officers. "No," he says, "I won't snitch on anyone in the department." They offer him no punishment more severe than a slap on the wrist and before he knows it, he'll be back on "the show," which he loves. "The show?" he asks. There is a long long moment while his face sort of drifts from surprise, through disbelief, and into resignation. Then he figuratively shrugs his shoulders and says, without any deliberation, "All right, I'll do it." The very model of a complete sellout. The other amusing scene is when he and Pearce accost a beautiful blond in a nightclub and sneer at her because she's a whore plastic-surgerized to look like Lana Turner. And Spacey informs Pearce to lay off, "She IS Lana Turner." When they return to their car, both officers begin laughing.
The photography is fine, the early 50s decor is what you'd expect from a professional job like this. There isn't much in the way of original music in the score -- hardly any in fact -- but period music is used, not overused, to good effect. (It's quality varies from Kay Starr to Cole Porter.) Extra Casting and Wardrobe even went to the trouble of making the actors playing Jerry Mulligan and Chet Baker LOOK LIKE Mulligan and Baker, although they cut Baker's recorded solo short on "The Lady is a Tramp."
The movie doesn't have a traditionally happy ending really. All values are gray, as they are in real life, rather than black and white. Pearce, the political animal, remains ambitious but now has distance enough from his role to see it for what it is. The same seems to be true for Crowe's character, who has found the love of a good woman. Well, the love of a woman anyway. Crowe still has a long way to go before reaching redemption. He's killed in cold blood a rapist and drug dealer and planted a gun on him and gotten away with it, but we've seen him look disgusted at some violence he's forced to witness later in the film. Vincennes is dead.
This one is definitely worth seeing.
Catch this, if you can.