Jam-packed with all the best crime drama elements

Rating: 9/10 (17 April 2008)

"L.A. Confidential" has it all: rebel cops, corrupt cops, two-faced killers, seductive women, drug-runners, prostitution, murder, set-ups, mystery, gun fights, suspense, brain-teasing twists and turns...the works. If that seems like too much crime drama stereotype for one film, let me assure you that it all works and it works well. That's why "L.A. Confidential" is hailed as one of the best films of the 1990s, though it should be seen as the precedent- setter for the crime drama-obsessed decade that followed it.
The plot is too intricate to summarize briefly, but after LAPD cops and detectives beat up on several jailed Mexicans because the Mexicans had allegedly been responsible for the beating of two other cops, the bad press for the LAPD sets into motion a sequence of events that become further worsened when a massacre occurs at a coffee shop. Bud White (Crowe), Jack Vicennes (Spacey) and Ed Exley (Pearce) are all very different cops who go about investigating the case differently but end up closer to each other than they realize.
"LAC" can be viewed in two separate halves. The first hour feels like a film in itself and the second hour feels totally different until the ending ties the two together. The feeling you get is the film is long, especially because mystery-wise your brain has been working in overdrive if you like to try and figure things out. It's a wild ride, albeit a very good one.
The acting is all phenomenal. Everyone plays terrific characters. The film was just the beginning for Crowe's leading roles, Spacey works his lovably hateable charm and Pearce really adds a different dimension to the cast as highly moral justice-driven cop. Even Kim Basinger as a woman involved with and caught up in this mystery seems to steal every scene that she's in with her beauty and poise.
The only thing going against the film is at times it does feel over-the-top with all the plot lines going on, especially at the end, but at that point you're so caught up in the well-developed characters and their subsequent motives, as well as the mystery, that the feeling is easy to block out. Had it not been the first, it may not have been one of the best crime dramas of all time, but it certainly was and it deserves kudos for it.