A high moment in Hollywood's history.

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 1999)

This is written over two years after seeing this remarkable film. Nothing I thought about it then has changed. Two thirds of the way through my first viewing of "L.A. Confidential", it hit me that this was the single best American film I had ever seen. I cannot put into words how disappointed I was when "Titanic" won "Best Picture" at the Oscars. In any other year - other than in competition with the biggest blockbuster of all time (so far) - this movie would have walked away with the Prize. And it would have left everyone stunned at such an accomplished plot, with complex characters, twists and turns, and with an atmosphere as thick as Jupiter's. The multi-threaded plot is not your everyday Hollywood jump-from-character-to-character-and-scene-to-scene, but is absolutely vital to the viewer's descent into early-50s L.A. The source of the evil underlying the story is a mystery to the viewer for much of the movie. But it is not a mystery flick. There is no atmosphere of whodunit, even though the viewer does wonder who did do it. But what "it" is isn't even made clear in one fell swoop, but is unfolded, peeled like an artichoke, layer by layer. Who the bad guys and good guys are isn't even made clear for such a long, delicious time.
Hear me now and understand me later, the viewer's mind is required to work when watching this movie. And isn't that a novelty in a Hollywood that foreshadows everything, including breakfast? Foreshadowing is a wonderful device if used sparingly. In an era where most films give away (two to five minutes ahead) almost every story twist and turn, "L.A. Confidential" uses the time others use in presenting the foreshadowing to actually add substance to the story. Now, that is a real novelty -- more story. Leaving the theatre, it is amazing how much story Curtis Hanson packed into this film.
Nothing Bogie ever did was better. No fictional world or city ever drew the viewer in as well as Hanson's Los Angeles. Those who lived back in the fifties know that THIS place WAS how it was, to a very large extent.
For the record, I do NOT like police movies. They are so cookie-cutter written, cast and directed. They are all formula and no personality, all loose cannons and bad-cop-good-cop devices. THIS cop flick was slick, without any of those standard gimmicks. That is the beauty of it - it defines itself by its own standards, and then implements them without flaw. I could say that it re-defined the genre of cop flicks. I would like to say that others would follow in the same direction. But those ideas would be self-delusional. This movie defines only itself, and that definition is this: a massively, colossal achievement of story, characters and period piece.
This movie will certainly grow in stature as the years go by, and will be, not just a 90s classic, but a classic for all time. It will rightly stand next to "The Maltese Falcon", "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane" as a movie that is itself a standard.