One of the best crime films of the 90s

Rating: 8/10 (25 April 2010)

L.A Confidential is a film full with great performances as one might well expect from such a brilliant ensemble cast. Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe are all terrific as three very different L.A. cops. Exley (Pearce) is the college graduate who truly believes in doing good and that there is a right way to act as a police officer, Vincennes (Spacey) is almost a celebrity cop with a job as an adviser on a fictional TV cop show and an arrangement with Sid Hudgens (Danny De Vito)of Hush-Hush magazine who will frequently be there to take pictures of Vincennes arresting a film star for drug possession. Finally there is Bud White (Russell Crowe) who is the tough guy, who gets his results by strong arming suspects.
Director Curtis Hanson recreates 1940s Los Angeles very believably and the film is consistently well shot. Its pacing is also pitch perfect, there is hardly a line wasted, every scene moves the plot along. To say that Hanson paces the film perfectly is no small complement, having adapted the story from a fairly long novel by James Ellroy which has a complex plot with many characters and yet after just over two hours the film ends and there is no sense that anything has been left out or that the film is anyway incomplete. L.A. Confidential will hold your attention from start to finish.
The plot itself has some basis in real events such as the acts of police brutality in the holding cells on Christmas Eve and the murders of a group of people at the Nite Owl. To say any more about the story would be to spoil it but suffice to say you'd do really well to see where it's going.
The characters of the three police officers all undergo some transformation as the film progresses and all three actors handle it brilliantly with special kudos going to Pearce in the main role as Exley learns a great many tough lessons, including some about himself. No review of this film would be complete without at least a mention of Kim Basinger's performance, she easily holds her own in her scenes with Crowe and Pearce and that Oscar is well deserved.