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By my money, I consider James Ellroy\u2019s “LA Confidential” to be one of the greatest crime dramas ever made. It’s an elaborate, morose, and brutally intelligent display of respective talents and truly keen storytelling that gets better with every single viewing. \u201cLA Confidential\u201d was not a real hit with me upon the first viewing; in fact I found it painfully mediocre once the credits began to roll. Suddenly, I found myself watching it repeatedly and soon discovered that it was a stellar piece of filmmaking that grew on me once I opened my mind a bit.<\/p>\n
When you get down to the nitty gritty, \u201cLA Confidential\u201d is that period piece that takes such painstaking efforts in staying loyal to the decade that writers Helgeland and Hanson even pick up the colloquialisms with some of the most convincing deliveries of thirties one liners I\u2019ve ever heard. Pair that up with the cast and you have a juggernaut of a masterpiece that was drowned out by the shit that was \u201cTitanic.\u201d Take the brilliant performances by Crowe, Pearce, Spacey, and a respective ensemble, and \u201cLA Confidential\u201d is a two fold murder mystery that transforms in to a slow boil take on government and police corruption at a time where racism and prejudice was a societal norm.<\/p>\n
By my money it\u2019s really Russell Crowe\u2019s film and it was a deserving contender for the Best Picture of 1997, and a neo-noir masterpiece in the league of \u201cDouble Indemnity.\u201d It’s a masterpiece crime thriller with an array of skilled actors given a hell of a DVD treatment with over three hours of extras, and a sound track disc for the DVD collector. Screw renting it, buy it and realize how much Hanson’s master work was robbed.<\/p>\n
As for the DVD<\/strong>, we\u2019re given a masterful selection of features and prizes for the collector, one in particular is a six track soundtrack of the film\u2019s score with artists like Jackie Gleason, Johnny Mercer, Dean Martin, and Betty Hutton to name a few. My favorite of the six tracks would have to be track one, but track two \u201cLook for the Silver Lining\u201d is a nice little ditty.<\/p>\n On Disc One, we\u2019re given a commentary with James Ellroy, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, and a slew of others that I\u2019m assuming is an older commentary but still damn incredible to listen to only because this movie deserves the sort of royal treatment. But they don\u2019t sit around to talk and gab, it\u2019s more a commentary on favorite scenes with separate voice over\u2019s by the individual cast members which is a considerable let down. There\u2019s also the film in the Music Only Track displaying the amazing score from Jerry Goldsmith, and there\u2019s a Trailer Gallery with the teasers and full theatrical previews.<\/p>\n On Disc Two, \u201cWhatever you Desire: Making LA Confidential\u201d is one in many new featurettes ranging between thirty to sixty minutes. \u201cWhatever you Desire\u201d is definitely one of the better specials in the gallery and what fun it is to see interviews with Crowe. \u201cSunlight and Shadow\u201d is the wonderful look at the importance of light and color in \u201cLA Confidential and what character it brings to the story and it\u2019s an incredible twenty one minute nod to the sheer pivotal impact shadows can have in a noir film. \u201cA True Ensemble\u201d is a twenty four minute look at the forming of the cast of the film and what they brought to the film and it\u2019s quite a remarkable little glimpse at the creative process that went along with the construction of the production. Curtis Hanson also explains that he wanted unknowns for the two primary anti-heroes Ed and Bud, and it\u2019s a genius move. Consider that Pearce and Crowe were virtual unknowns at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom Book to Screen\u201d is a twenty one minute look at the transition from Ellroy\u2019s printed word mystery to Hanson\u2019s literal adaptation. It\u2019s pretty obvious why Hanson was drawn to Ellroy and we learn that it was a feat for the director who wanted a challenge with the source material. \u201cOff the Record\u201d is an eighteen minute is an excellent interview with Hanson comparing his film to the likes of Bogie and Cagney, and he\u2019s on the money. \u201cLA Confidential\u201d is in that royalty, and Hanson goes off on how honored he is to be in that arena.<\/p>\n He also candidly explains how hard it was to take unlikable characters and turn them in to sympathetic figures. \u201cPhoto Pitch\u201d is an eight minute interview with Hanson on how he pitched the film to Warner Bros. through visualizations and 1930\u2019s landmarks that would set the tone for his magnum opus. \u201cThe LA of LA Confidential\u201d is an amazing looking at fifteen landmarks classic, ancient, and still running in Los Angeles with a map that points to the directions you want to learn more about personified through scenes from the film. My goodness. Last but not least we have the failed pilot to the series \u201cLA Confidential\u201d featuring Keifer Sutherland! It isn\u2019t a bad series starter, but for what the film entailed, it\u2019s too soft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By my money, I consider James Ellroy\u2019s “LA Confidential” to be one of the greatest crime dramas ever made. It’s an elaborate, morose, and brutally intelligent display of respective talents and truly keen storytelling that gets better with every single viewing. \u201cLA Confidential\u201d was not a real hit with me upon the first viewing; in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,240,302,391,590,637,720,734,786,874,1087],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-crime","tag-drama","tag-gangster","tag-l","tag-masterpiece","tag-neo-noir","tag-noir","tag-police","tag-romance","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39446,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/39446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}