A lushly gratifying story

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 1998)

Curtis Hanson obviously believes adapting James Ellroy's novel is his chance at bringing off a classic, so he aims high. Conceived in the manner of Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is set in '50s Los Angeles, where sleaze and scandal prowl their way through a police force wearied by its amoral neighbor, Hollywood. A shocking multiple-homicide occurs, and the uneasy investigation prompts two very different cops-one a by-the-book strait-lace, the other a callous fist-for-hire-to look more closely at the web of sex, corruption, celebrity, and violence they exist in everyday.
This is a movie that understands how corruption breeds from within, but also the consequences of naive nobility. Hanson engulfs his heroes in pessimism, and then watches them slither their way out. The fun of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, though, is in the labyrinthine plotting. Nothing is clear-cut, and so Hanson keeps springing delirious surprises on us. He doesn't possess Polanski's sandy vision of cynicism and wickedness as cancerous power, but despite the film's surface gloss, he tells a lushly gratifying story.
Kevin Spacey, as a bored detective infatuated with Hollywood glamour, and Guy Pearce, as the precinct's foremost careerist, deliver convincing, intelligent performances. Yet it is Russell Crowe, as the brutish, hot-tempered cop who begins to trust his brains as much as his brawn, who commands the film's center. Both despicable and noble, Crowe is a grand barbarian in the tradition of Robert Mitchum, so blinkered he's more human than anyone else in the film.
ERIC BELTMANN