Perfect

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2007)

The best American film of the 1990s, the movie that made me believe in Hollywood again. The movie that jump-started Kiam Basinger's second chance and the movie that proved the star power of Russell Crowe. The characters played by both of them are profoundly human, flawed yet endearing, and they deliver lines that blow you away, as good as anything Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall delivered in "The Big Sleep". The twists and turns of the plot keep you nailed to your seat and there are scenes so suddenly surprising that the first time you see them you don't believe your eyes. Kevin Spacey shines as a cop who thinks he's cool and who can be bought for a penny, while Danny de Vito reminds us that he can be a great actor as a quick-buck pathetic journalist who makes a profit of exposing human weakness to gossip and scandal oblivious of the lives he ruins day after day. David Strathairn makes a mark with an almost invisible role, James Cromwell gives an Academuy-award giving performance and Guy Pierce breaks through as a glassy-eyed careerist who wins acclaim and loses his soul as he pushes his way up the ranks of the L.A. police force. The only way to succeed in the city of fallen angels is corruption, to follow the devil's advice and to "lose the glasses, boyo." To climb up in this town you need to freefall down. There's no success like failure -I'm quoting Dylan-- and failure's no success at all.