A thoroughly competent, but ultimately flavorless film. The acting is solid, the story is well-paced, and the major characters have defined arcs, but it's all executed in such a generic, perfunctory manner that the entire thing left me cold. The cheesy dialogue and generic archetype characters certainly set the film back, but at the end of the day it's a very solid film that never rises above being solid. It's pablum. The pablum is well-done and it's all technically sound, but it's also tremendously uninspired, checking the boxes for a prestige picture without adding anything new or interesting to the standard tropes it employs. Quite a disappointment for a film I was really looking forward to watching.
LA Confidential starts off pretty slow, but gets better with the minute. The first half hour I kept mixing up names and places and didn't really get where the story was going. But after a while it picked up speed, the characters developed, the 'plot thickened' (as they say), and through all kinds of side-stories and personal quests it was slowly revealed where the story was headed to end with a bang.
The story itself is pretty decent, but has been done (many times) before. The good stuff about this film is the film noir crime feeling, which really adds to the suspense. The best stuff about this film is the amazing acting by almost the entire cast; they managed to give so much personality to their individual characters that they really lifted this film from mediocre to great!
I have zero comprehension of the Lynn / Ed relationship and the ending scene.
The last third of the movie is much more poorly written than earlier sequences – it's like the writers felt an overbearing urgency to get to any kind of conclusion because of how little playtime they had left to do so.
Awesome cast and a great story, but not as surprising as I’d hoped. You can see everything coming from a mile away. Still very enjoyable! Whole thing gave me L.A. Noire vibes too, which is a big plus in my book.
I find Exley's interactions with Lynn Bracken really jarring to the point of taking me out of the movie. Some stuff made absolutely no sense for Exley's character. Otherwise quite solid.
Started interesting but not really sure what I am suppose to get from this movie. Story is predictable, acting was nice, characters are pretty standard. There are somethings that don’t make sense and repeated interactions that don’t add to the story.
Good movie, but not more. the acting is ok, but the story left me cold. I aspect a little bit more after all these praiseful reviews.
Always heard great things about this one and now I finally confirmed it myself. L.A. Confidential is excellent! An absolutely terrific thriller!
Great direction, great dialogues, great and very intriguing story with very good twists and turns.
The performances are outstanding by all of the amazing cast but I have to do a special mention to Kevin Spacey, he is such a good actor! I love to see him perform. He is so powerful, he doesn't even need to speak to spread his charm! I wish we could see him in more films nowadays.
If this film is not perfect I am sure that is very close to that.
Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood, but this one was particularly enjoyable as the Aussies won out...except for Simon Baker. Shock and intrigue, but why did she sleep with Ed?!
Third time... Great great great.
Kim Basinger is a little bit too beautiful.
8/10 for the good parts and 4/10 for the boring or confusing filler scenes. The problem is the filler scenes are all throughout the movie and are the first 30 minutes so as long as you can put up with a little over an hour of boring sporadically mixed with an hour of good stuff then watch this.
When you think of neo-noir, it certainly doesn't take long to arrive at "L.A. Confidential". For me, this movie is the ultimate representative of the subgenre. It is bursting with atmosphere and stylishly tackles themes such as organized crime and police corruption in Los Angeles after World War II. The Hollywood theme, in combination with numerous sins, is, of course, also present. The plot is perhaps a little overloaded with too many characters, but it is easy to follow at all times. The tension is maintained until the very last minute.
However, "L.A. Confidential" only becomes a truly great film because of the consistently strong performances. Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce are convincing in the lead roles. But the important supporting parts are also well cast, with actors such as Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and Kim Basinger. Ultimately, this film adaptation of James Ellroy's novel of the same name is, in its quality, a rather unique work of art. Those who like the setting should perhaps give the game "L.A. Noire" a chance.
So that's a film noir. Kind of. Technically it isn't but it feels like a film noir. Everything is solid: cinematography, actors, atmosphere and character building. 1950's California is also a great location. I really like the 50s design, men in suits, and an intimate look at the Californian dream (if there's such term). Manufactured by Hollywood. And shattered.
Only issue I have: I have seen this before. Bits and pieces of it can be found in almost all Hollywood thrillers or movies about cops and the mob. It's still suspenseful how exactly the story will go down but it ain't unique enough to be more than a 7/10. If that movie were made in 1960 we would maybe have an 8/10 but I can't see that this was still an influential movie in 1997. Even the style, let's call it "modern noir" for the lack of a better term (there's probably a name for this genre), as much as I like it, is not very different from 1974 Chinatown an there's plenty real film noir classics that tell better stories. I mean, I get it. Back in 1997 people still went to the movies and the audience hadn't seen a film-noir-like movie for ages. To end this dry spell, they released LA confidential. It was a calculated move. There was no need to be extra innovative and reinvent the genre.
Best piece of 50s tech: a backyard incinerator (only mentioned - unfortunately not shown). What is that? Is that like a little waste combustion plant just for one block?
PS: when I saw Audrey in Roman Holiday in that one scene, I instantly knew that LA confidential never will be a classic movie. It lacks the magic.
Fine, I think this is massively overrated. It doesn’t entirely work as pulp, nor as art. It’s too well written and the performances are too good to simply neglect it as a formulaic noir thriller. On the other hand, this feels visually too pastiche, it’s a director doing an impression of Roman Polanski, except it’s not as precise. Some directorial choices in particular feel over the top given how serious the movie is (e.g. the music choice during the fight at the police station; RusselI Crowe seemingly having superhuman strength in some scenes; a cop character threatening someone by hanging the person out of a window), but I would say that most of it is competently done. Still, I find it weird that its lack of ingenuity didn’t get panned at the time, because it came out in an era where you had the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing) and David Fincher (Se7en) doing much more inventive stuff in this genre, making L.A. Confidential seem regressive by comparison. Meanwhile, I also wouldn’t say that the storytelling is its main strength. It’s a perfectly fine crime mystery with some nice twists, but the three main characters are way too one-dimensional, and what is ends up saying about its themes (justice, redemption) is pretty thin and general. It’s also not the kind of film where you’re going to remember individual bits or scenes, this is focussed on the bigger picture, and that picture is nothing special. It’s essentially a b-movie that’s elevated by the talent that’s involved in front of and behind the camera, but that doesn’t stop it from being average.
5.5/10
LA Noir rips this movie off so hard. I'm not sure if that makes it good, or if it's just very cliché, but it's enjoyable.
Pretty great action mystery thriller movie for it's time! Solid 7.5/10!
Noir is the new black.
bit slow at start.Overall great
Russell crowe's character was totally flipped in the end,
he was supposed to understand his woman instead he did the very thing he opposed the whole time.
Some of the parts were unnecessarily developed to increase length.
Great plot,perfomances and superending scene! 8.6/10
Shout by AlexanderZBlockedParent2016-12-21T10:03:43Z
Terrific storytelling brought to life by a collection of inspired performances makes L.A. Confidential an absolute winner.