This is a masterpiece and a perfect movie for me. There's only a couple movies I'd call perfect and this makes the list. It's kind of sad that this is kind of a forgotten movie. It's one that I've always loved and never forgotten and most people I ask about it have either never heard of it or haven't seen it since the 90s.
The story is very good and complex without being confusing. Even as the 7th grader that I was, I got the story. I had never seen this era dirty before, in my teenage mind, depravity started during the 60s, this of course isn't true. So it opened my eyes to that and made me think, "Duh." I like that it doesn't feel nostalgic to a bygone era. The decade isn't glorified and it isn't demeaned, it feels real, like it's a contemporary movie.
Obviously this is because of the director, Curtis Hanson. It's funny because he had never done a movie like this and he never did one after it. He made a lot of good movies but he never came close to this. He didn't even try actually, he just did what he did. Maybe that's what makes this movie so good. There are a million movies like this, it would be easy to follow many of the genre tropes or how the greats would do it. But Hanson doesn't do that.
There were a lot of little things he did that I either didn't notice as a kid or have an even greater appreciation for. I noticed that there's a few random hand held shots. Not shaky, but hand held. This isn't a give away that something is about to happen. It seems like a subconscious way to build tension? When Bud is listening to the interrogation of the Nite Owl suspects and he leans on the chair is an example. Also when Bud picks up Exley after the shoot out and you see Smith step in before they see him. No music or anything to give him away.
The casting is perfect. This isn't exclusive to the leads but every part. Every actor does a great job but it's more than that, they look the part. You take one look and you know who they are. I'm actually surprised that 25 years later, with all the other movies that I've seen that so many of these faces are still unfamiliar. There are a lot of dumb looking brutes at the police station. Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito were the biggest stars going into it and they are supporting. James Cromwell is so good that I was surprised to learn that he wasn't actually Irish. To me he just looks so Irish.
Of course the careers of the main three were launched. Kevin Spacey was already a familiar face but he wasn't a household name. He does such a good job in this. He is so cool. But he plays the coolness as a veneer, it's not who he is, it's who he likes to be and Spacey plays that on his face. On the making of they said that he was based off of Dean Martin and I can totally see that. And in his scenes there is usually a Dino song playing.
Guy Pierce was a new face, who obviously became very familiar after this. This was the reason I saw Memento in the theaters. My mom asked me if I wanted to see it and I said, "Oh yeah, it's got the guy from LA Confidential in it." It's funny that he's the goody two shoes because he's just not corrupt and does things by the book. I like that he has to get a little dirty at the end. He has a good reason for it of course. Smith would have gotten away with it, hell, he still does. It seems that the reason he shoots him in the back is because he is mad by Dudley's smugness that he knows he's going to get away with it and he doesn't even sweat it. I guess if he didn't shoot him then Exley would have no choice but to be his golden boy.
Russel Crowe launched the biggest from here. I remember seeing Gladiator and also saying, "The guy from LA Confidential is in it." He plays a dumb brute that isn't a dumb brute and he plays it very well. He looks like he has other things going on behind his eyes. When he is playing the muscle he is acting the part, it isn't who he is. And he also doesn't play it where he looks pissed all the time. He is just quick to go there. And he isn't a huge bulky guy, he's solid but he doesn't look like He-Man, but when he gets set it's his rage that gives him his power.
The three leads are in a transitional place, Vincennes has lost his way and doesn't really know why he's doing it anymore, White wants to be more than what he's been and Exley is a rising star that is hitting a wall of what his superiors will allow him to be. A good little thing that I thought was a good way to show White and Exley working together was when Exley throws White the keys and White throws him the clip.
I like that at the end everything doesn't perfectly wrap up. They stop the plot by the bad guys but the corruption in the department is still there and Exley has to go along with it while also winning. When Dudley shoots Jack I was blown away. I don't know if I was young but I do think that this would be a surprise. Because many times in these movies the guy who turns out to be bad never shows a glimpse of it beforehand but Smith is shown to beat people and all of that but he isn't any worse than the others. If he was all good it would have been a dead give away. This movie moves, there's never a dull moment in it. It moves very fast. There is humor but it's subtle and not forced. The music is great, it's also played sparingly.
Of course the shoot out is so good. It's cool that it's from the hero's POV, making the bad guys faceless adds to the tension. You don't know how many there are, where they are and who they are. When it first starts all you see is headlights. And it kind of comes out of nowhere, you don't go into this scene knowing that this is the big showdown. Everything is moving so fast and coming together that when they realize it you realize it and it's too late. They are mostly just shooting at the windows and the couple times you see who they're hitting they light them up in a very satisfying way. Of course Bud shooting the guys feet is the coolest.
I first saw this in the summer of '98. I of course knew of it. I remember which clips were used during the Oscars since that was the first glimpse I saw of it. The first time I saw it was when we had a free HBO weekend, (remember those?) and I knew this movie had something to do with porn so we thought that there was going to be a lot of boobs in it, Kim Basinger's perhaps? Maybe, the poster was pretty close. We didn't have the internet to tell us otherwise so what did we do back then? We had to see for ourselves. Well we didn't get very much nudity but we did get one hell of a movie. One that not only has stayed in my mind since then but one that my group of friends also love and reference a lot and is one of my favorites. A movie that I reference as what to do and what not to do.
This of course came from a book and boy oh boy, it's quite a bit different. Hanson and Brian Helgeland did an amazing job. The book is a thousand pages and takes place over ten years. Somehow they were able to take the basic story, even changing a few things to make it a two hour movie. But the three main characters are the same. They preserved them perfectly. And they adapted this with love and respect for the book. A lot of scenes get repurposed in the movie, the main scenes stay in and big characters find small parts just so they make it in. Reading the book I have no idea how they found the movie that they did. They did a very good job, masterful as Dudley would say.
The story is very good and complex without being confusing. Even as the 7th grader that I was, I got the story. I had never seen this era dirty before, in my teenage mind, depravity started during the 60s, this of course isn't true. So it opened my eyes to that and made me think, "Duh." I like that it doesn't feel nostalgic to a bygone era. The decade isn't glorified and it isn't demeaned, it feels real, like it's a contemporary movie.
Obviously this is because of the director, Curtis Hanson. It's funny because he had never done a movie like this and he never did one after it. He made a lot of good movies but he never came close to this. He didn't even try actually, he just did what he did. Maybe that's what makes this movie so good. There are a million movies like this, it would be easy to follow many of the genre tropes or how the greats would do it. But Hanson doesn't do that.
There were a lot of little things he did that I either didn't notice as a kid or have an even greater appreciation for. I noticed that there's a few random hand held shots. Not shaky, but hand held. This isn't a give away that something is about to happen. It seems like a subconscious way to build tension? When Bud is listening to the interrogation of the Nite Owl suspects and he leans on the chair is an example. Also when Bud picks up Exley after the shoot out and you see Smith step in before they see him. No music or anything to give him away.
The casting is perfect. This isn't exclusive to the leads but every part. Every actor does a great job but it's more than that, they look the part. You take one look and you know who they are. I'm actually surprised that 25 years later, with all the other movies that I've seen that so many of these faces are still unfamiliar. There are a lot of dumb looking brutes at the police station. Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito were the biggest stars going into it and they are supporting. James Cromwell is so good that I was surprised to learn that he wasn't actually Irish. To me he just looks so Irish.
Of course the careers of the main three were launched. Kevin Spacey was already a familiar face but he wasn't a household name. He does such a good job in this. He is so cool. But he plays the coolness as a veneer, it's not who he is, it's who he likes to be and Spacey plays that on his face. On the making of they said that he was based off of Dean Martin and I can totally see that. And in his scenes there is usually a Dino song playing.
Guy Pierce was a new face, who obviously became very familiar after this. This was the reason I saw Memento in the theaters. My mom asked me if I wanted to see it and I said, "Oh yeah, it's got the guy from LA Confidential in it." It's funny that he's the goody two shoes because he's just not corrupt and does things by the book. I like that he has to get a little dirty at the end. He has a good reason for it of course. Smith would have gotten away with it, hell, he still does. It seems that the reason he shoots him in the back is because he is mad by Dudley's smugness that he knows he's going to get away with it and he doesn't even sweat it. I guess if he didn't shoot him then Exley would have no choice but to be his golden boy.
Russel Crowe launched the biggest from here. I remember seeing Gladiator and also saying, "The guy from LA Confidential is in it." He plays a dumb brute that isn't a dumb brute and he plays it very well. He looks like he has other things going on behind his eyes. When he is playing the muscle he is acting the part, it isn't who he is. And he also doesn't play it where he looks pissed all the time. He is just quick to go there. And he isn't a huge bulky guy, he's solid but he doesn't look like He-Man, but when he gets set it's his rage that gives him his power.
The three leads are in a transitional place, Vincennes has lost his way and doesn't really know why he's doing it anymore, White wants to be more than what he's been and Exley is a rising star that is hitting a wall of what his superiors will allow him to be. A good little thing that I thought was a good way to show White and Exley working together was when Exley throws White the keys and White throws him the clip.
I like that at the end everything doesn't perfectly wrap up. They stop the plot by the bad guys but the corruption in the department is still there and Exley has to go along with it while also winning. When Dudley shoots Jack I was blown away. I don't know if I was young but I do think that this would be a surprise. Because many times in these movies the guy who turns out to be bad never shows a glimpse of it beforehand but Smith is shown to beat people and all of that but he isn't any worse than the others. If he was all good it would have been a dead give away. This movie moves, there's never a dull moment in it. It moves very fast. There is humor but it's subtle and not forced. The music is great, it's also played sparingly.
Of course the shoot out is so good. It's cool that it's from the hero's POV, making the bad guys faceless adds to the tension. You don't know how many there are, where they are and who they are. When it first starts all you see is headlights. And it kind of comes out of nowhere, you don't go into this scene knowing that this is the big showdown. Everything is moving so fast and coming together that when they realize it you realize it and it's too late. They are mostly just shooting at the windows and the couple times you see who they're hitting they light them up in a very satisfying way. Of course Bud shooting the guys feet is the coolest.
I first saw this in the summer of '98. I of course knew of it. I remember which clips were used during the Oscars since that was the first glimpse I saw of it. The first time I saw it was when we had a free HBO weekend, (remember those?) and I knew this movie had something to do with porn so we thought that there was going to be a lot of boobs in it, Kim Basinger's perhaps? Maybe, the poster was pretty close. We didn't have the internet to tell us otherwise so what did we do back then? We had to see for ourselves. Well we didn't get very much nudity but we did get one hell of a movie. One that not only has stayed in my mind since then but one that my group of friends also love and reference a lot and is one of my favorites. A movie that I reference as what to do and what not to do.
This of course came from a book and boy oh boy, it's quite a bit different. Hanson and Brian Helgeland did an amazing job. The book is a thousand pages and takes place over ten years. Somehow they were able to take the basic story, even changing a few things to make it a two hour movie. But the three main characters are the same. They preserved them perfectly. And they adapted this with love and respect for the book. A lot of scenes get repurposed in the movie, the main scenes stay in and big characters find small parts just so they make it in. Reading the book I have no idea how they found the movie that they did. They did a very good job, masterful as Dudley would say.