A two fisted film noire as good as "Chinatown" !

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2002)

This highly stylized film noire, set in 1953 Los Angeles, has the Byzantine plot, hard-boiled characters, and snappy dialogue de rigeur of the genre. It's a boiling caldron of the greed and ambition of mobsters and crooked cops and hookers and scumbag politicians, where the good guys are worse than the bad guys and not until the very end do you find out who's who and what's what - BUT, Shhhhhhhh, as Danny DeVito's Sid Hudgeons, heartless reporter for a Tinseltown exposé magazine whispers in his voice-over narration, it's all "strictly confidential, on the QT, and very VERY hush-hush."
Interviewed by James Lipton on Bravo's "Actors Studio" series, lead Kevin Spacey told how, when being cast for the role of Detective Jack Vincennes, he asked Director Curtis Hanson, "if this really were 1953, who would you cast in the role?" Hanson replied, "Dean Martin," and Spacey plays him as Dino played Broadway wise guy Michael Whitacre in "The Young Lions," with that seeming indifference, sly smile, and effortless cool that was Dino's trademark.
Kim Bassinger, won the Best Support Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the absolutely luscious high-class hooker Lynn Bracken, made up to look like a Veronica Lake lookalike, and you believe in her and care about her from her first appearance on screen.
Russell Crowe, not yet a star, is a veritable gladiator as tough cop Bud White, with a soft spot for damsels in distress who becomes Bassinger's love interest.
James Cromwell (was he REALLY the kindly farmer in "Babe" ? the weary and understanding judge in "Snow Falling on Cedars" ?) is reptilian as conniving police captain Dudley Smith.
Guy Pearce is superb as Detective Lt. Ed Exley, an honest cop who won't take a ten dollar gratuity, but at the same time is on the fast track to success and never misses an opportunity to advance his career, no matter whose toes or face he has to step on.
David Strathairn plays a type somehow peculiar to Los Angeles: the sleazy, mob-connected businessman with quiet good taste who has insinuated his way into the not-so-polite Hollywood Hills society of parvenues that doesn't really care how a man makes his money, so long as he succeeds and can afford the elegant mansion and bodyguards who double as chauffeurs and mechanics and tend to the classic cars in the garage.
The camera captures the expansiveness and grunge of the Southern California landscape, the white stucco that burns in the desert sun, the low-rise apartments, the taudry back alleyways, the utter cheapness of the metropolis, high rent districts and low.
This one's as good as "Chinatown" !