cool, concise and brilliantly crafted

Rating: 10/10 (9 March 2009)

This is one of my favourite films of all time; the best detective movie ever! Russel crowe, Kevin spacey and James Cromwell play the coolest cops ever and Guy Pearce does an equally fantastic job as the uptight 'to the book' cop. The film starts off by showing each of the cops specific techniques of dealing with problems; Bud white (Crowe) has a major dislike for women abusers and believes they should be punished severely. Ed Exley (Pearce)is an uptight man who wears glasses, very unpopular amongst the police. As the film is set in the 1950's at the time of rising film/ t.v. stars there is the 'commericial' cop; Jack vincennes (Spacey) perhaps the best character. And the Legendary James Cromwell as Lt.Dudley Smith the boss, I won't say more. After a mass shooting in a diner (the nite owl) possible leads shoot off in every direction as the 3 detectives search for the rest of the pieces to the puzzle. As the story builds a look a like call girl (Kim Basinger) falls into the plot and so too does talkative press man and friend of Jack vincennes (Danny Devito, who also narrates). The screenplay has both clever plot twists and; flash dialogue, characters and setting. The plot twists and characterisation is on par with the usual suspects but with one difference; L.A. confidential is always; 'Off the record, on the QT and very Hush Hush'