"L.A. Confidential" Review: A '90s Homage to '50s Noir

It remains overhyped, but Curtis Hanson's Neo-noir thriller is a worthy member of late '90s film cannon.

April 22, 2024

A month ago, I had an idea for a cake: vanilla crumb with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, a caramel drizzle, and a dusting of cinnamon sugar. Essentially, it would taste like Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.

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It was a brilliant idea, but the execution was lacking. The oven was too hot, resulting in a dry cake that crumbled to the touch, making it impossible to frost. The caramel drizzle was too thick, and after all the frustration from the structural issues, I forgot the cinnamon sugar entirely.

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At the same time, the flavor was undeniable. Was it as moist as intended? No. Was the structural integrity of each component as envisioned? Absolutely not. But boy, did it taste good.

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It inspires a resurgence of the age-old ideological divide between two distinct types of movie lovers: those who praise the idea and those who demand good execution.

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In Curtis Hanson’s beloved crime drama, L.A. Confidential, this separation emerges once again. On Christmas Eve, 1953, the City of Angels is restless. Officer Bud White has just departed a liquor store, having met the alluring Lynn Bracken and a young woman with seeming facial injuries waiting in a car outside. En route to the LAPD Christmas party, he comes across a domestic violence dispute. After disarming the husband and shepherding the wife to safety, he and his partner, Richard Stensland, return to the police station, where Stensland gets informed that a group of Mexican men allegedly responsible for an assault on fellow officers are in the holding cells downstairs.

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The following five minutes are a brutal confrontation between the LAPD and their captives, the fallout of which is the catalyst for the unfolding of a massive conspiracy that reaches from the holding area of a police station to the highest legal office in the city to the seedy underworld of organized prostitution. Along the way, a thrilling cast of characters, like the classic femme fatale, the brutish officer with a traumatic past, and the up-and-coming detective in the shadow of his esteemed father, all play their part in furthering, deepening, and, ultimately, uncovering the mystery.

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It sounds enthralling, but it never fully respects its ingredients, a case of the whole being lesser than the sum of its parts. Jerry Goldsmith, the noir music master, delivers a fantastic score that gives the movie its genre’s intoxicating essence, and the players are spot-on in lending the proceedings a splash of camp that creates the aura of a corny ‘50s procedural without wholly sacrificing the necessary atmosphere to feel like a compelling crime thriller.

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Unfortunately, it can never decide how to fulfill its potential and promise. The city is overly saturated and polished; the suffocating atmosphere of noir is lost in the gritty underworld of a corrupt Los Angeles. The dialogue is occasionally too on-the-nose, the mystery feels like it unfolds almost by design, not because the screenplay is sharp enough to make each discovery feel earned, and each piece on the board moves within its role but without the urgency to make each moment feel as impactful as it should.

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Hence, the movie often asks that we be more impressed with it than it deserves, especially when it takes the short route to legitimize its characters and their roles in the story. As much as we’re to believe Exley is a shrewd socio-political tactician and strategic climber, many of his plans, like his gambit after the jailhouse brawl, aren’t revelatory so much as common sense. The allure of Lynn Bracken is sold well by Oscar-winner Kim Basinger, but the actual writing underserves what could’ve been a more compelling character; the result is a limp and sexless relationship between the femme fatale and the brutish White.

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It’s unfortunate, because L.A. Confidential finds something deeply worthwhile within White. He’s a rageful man whose fury stems from a traumatic childhood, and while he’s effective muscle for the LAPD, he has intellect to spare. He’s a nuanced character, but mostly on paper. His development is rudimentary and lacks conviction; Russell Crowe saves him from being a limp aim at a stronger character.

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In fact, most of the film's characters are more intriguing on paper than on screen, and that lack of vitality renders L.A. Confidential unable to pack the punch it always feels so close to landing.

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It has everything: a fantastic cast, gorgeous scenery, and a thousand threads to explore, which all weave their way together and create a story without loose ends or looming questions. But, despite the faultless recipe, the chef doesn’t deliver a fully satisfying meal. It’s a noir that isn’t gritty or atmospheric, almost like it wants to defy the genre’s conventions while exploiting them to achieve greatness. In some moments, it works. Exley’s arrival at the Nite Owl massacre feels like an eerie evocation of the restaurant scene in The Godfather, filled with tension in a cramped space with the gothic unease that characterizes Rebecca’s finest moments.

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When it finds those nuggets of genius and creates stretches during which it capitalizes on them, L.A. Confidential is in the upper class of noirs and crime thrillers. It tantalizes with Basinger’s Bracken, unravels the propriety of the ambitious Exley, and elaborates on the complex brutality of White, all while roping in TV heavyweight Sergeant Jack Vincennes, puff piece pedaler Sid Hutchins, and ethically compromised Captain Dudley Smith, each a fitting cog in an intriguing, enveloping wheel. It’s a tragedy it cannot make them all fit together as well as it would seem.

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It’s a nifty fact of the movie’s construction because it certainly gets better as it goes along. Such is the case with all movies of its kind, always building, forever unraveling, and expanding as it contracts, loosening the reins to establish all the players and stakes while tightening the narrative to cleanly but intriguingly guide us to its conclusion. People get pitted against one another, loose allies get snuffed out by unexpected foes, titans of seedy business turn on behemoths of equally powerful entities, and when all is said and done, we have a general idea of what happened, why, to who, and where all this illuminating detective work has taken us.

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Unfortunately, to be truly great, a story must be engaging and fully imagined from beginning to end; you’re more likely to get that from James Ellroy’s novel than Hanson and co-writer Brian Helgeland’s screenplay.

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It’s a movie you’ll ultimately like more for its ingredients than the final product, but it’s the sort of movie we don’t see enough. Sure, by the time dish reaches diner, it should be fully conceptualized and faultlessly executed; patrons don’t pay for an idea. But it raises the question of how far ingredients can take a dish. If the cinnamon is ground fresh from the stick, the eggs taken straight from the farm, the caramel crafted from the finest organic sugar, etc., does that count for something if the cake, while very tasty, would’ve been better if prepared by a more talented, thoughtful baker?

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Well, if you ask my cinnamon toast crunch cake, no, but it's biased and in a landfill.

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If you ask L.A. Confidential, the answer is yes. In reality, the truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in the middle. L.A Confidential is strong because Curtis Hanson is closer to The Great British Bake-Off than America’s Worst Home Cooks: far closer. Unfortunately, it isn’t a fantastic movie because he doesn’t craft his cinematic cake with the scientific attentiveness necessary to deliver a masterpiece.