Q:Build a movie plot around this: What does Sargent Ed Exley do to get a promotion? Testify in the Bloody Christmas case
A:
In early 1950s Los Angeles, Patrolman Sergeant Edmund "Ed" Exley (Guy Pearce), the son of the legendary LAPD detective Preston Exley, is determined to live up to his father's reputation. His intelligence, insistence on following regulations, and cold demeanor contribute to his isolation from other officers. He exacerbates this resentment by volunteering to testify in the Bloody Christmas case in exchange for a promotion to Detective Lieutenant. This goes against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), who states that a detective should be willing to shoot a guilty man in the back for the greater good. Exley's ambition is fueled by the murder of his father, killed by an unknown assailant, whom Exley nicknames "Rollo Tomasi".Officer Wendell "Bud" White (Russell Crowe), whom Exley considers a "mindless thug", is a plainclothes officer obsessed with violently punishing woman-beaters. One such incident leads him to confront a former cop named Leland "Buzz" Meeks, a driver for Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn). White comes to dislike Exley after White's partner, Dick Stensland, is fired due to Exley's testimony in the Bloody Christmas scandal. White is sought out by Smith for a job in which they harass and beat up out-of-town criminals trying to fill the void left in Los Angeles following the imprisonment of gangster Mickey Cohen for tax evasion. The Nite Owl case, a multiple homicide at a coffee shop, becomes personal after Stensland is found to be one of the victims.Detective Sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a narcotics detective who moonlights as a technical advisor on Badge of Honor, a popular TV police drama series. He is providing Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), publisher of the Hush-Hush tabloid magazine, with tips about celebrity arrests that will attract more readers to Hudgens' magazine. When he becomes involved in Hudgens' scheme to set up actor Matt Reynolds (Simon Baker) in a homosexual tryst with L.A. district attorney Ellis Loew (Ron Rifkin), and Reynolds is killed as a result,...