The Black Dahlia (2006)
Country: US
Technical: col/Super 35 121m
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Fiona Shaw, Bill Finley (in a hideously thankless old-timer role for the star of Phantom of the Paradise)
Synopsis:
Two L.A. police officers, former boxers both, are caught up in the grisly murder of a wannabe starlet. Meanwhile one of them has particular reasons to dread the imminent release of a former 'beef' (someone he had sent down).
Review:
Another dip into the murky pool of the author of L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy, this is one which affords director De Palma far too many opportunities to indulge his personal kinks. Leaving aside the first reel's plethora of police argot and gabbled exposition, the film resolves itself into a succession of revelations in which bisexuality is automatically grounds for moral culpability and one just knows the, mark you, Scottish millionaire's family will prove as rotten as his own cheaply constructed allotments. In other words, notwithstanding the realistic dialogue and attention to period detail this is little more than The Big Sleep for the flaunt-it age, where a lesbian stag film conforms to modern porn film tropes (and confuses soft and hardcore ones at that) and where the hero can shoot the femme fatale in cold blood and still run home to the golden girl. There is nothing new here; we even open on a shot of a boxer being prepared for the ring, the curtain-raiser of countless 'thrown fight' dramas. There are a couple of sequences in the director's best style, notably a crane shot over a building which visually ties together the two plot strands that drive the movie, but even these are derivative of earlier successes in The Untouchables and Snake Eyes.
Country: US
Technical: col/Super 35 121m
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Fiona Shaw, Bill Finley (in a hideously thankless old-timer role for the star of Phantom of the Paradise)
Synopsis:
Two L.A. police officers, former boxers both, are caught up in the grisly murder of a wannabe starlet. Meanwhile one of them has particular reasons to dread the imminent release of a former 'beef' (someone he had sent down).
Review:
Another dip into the murky pool of the author of L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy, this is one which affords director De Palma far too many opportunities to indulge his personal kinks. Leaving aside the first reel's plethora of police argot and gabbled exposition, the film resolves itself into a succession of revelations in which bisexuality is automatically grounds for moral culpability and one just knows the, mark you, Scottish millionaire's family will prove as rotten as his own cheaply constructed allotments. In other words, notwithstanding the realistic dialogue and attention to period detail this is little more than The Big Sleep for the flaunt-it age, where a lesbian stag film conforms to modern porn film tropes (and confuses soft and hardcore ones at that) and where the hero can shoot the femme fatale in cold blood and still run home to the golden girl. There is nothing new here; we even open on a shot of a boxer being prepared for the ring, the curtain-raiser of countless 'thrown fight' dramas. There are a couple of sequences in the director's best style, notably a crane shot over a building which visually ties together the two plot strands that drive the movie, but even these are derivative of earlier successes in The Untouchables and Snake Eyes.
Country: US
Technical: col/Super 35 121m
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Fiona Shaw, Bill Finley (in a hideously thankless old-timer role for the star of Phantom of the Paradise)
Synopsis:
Two L.A. police officers, former boxers both, are caught up in the grisly murder of a wannabe starlet. Meanwhile one of them has particular reasons to dread the imminent release of a former 'beef' (someone he had sent down).
Review:
Another dip into the murky pool of the author of L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy, this is one which affords director De Palma far too many opportunities to indulge his personal kinks. Leaving aside the first reel's plethora of police argot and gabbled exposition, the film resolves itself into a succession of revelations in which bisexuality is automatically grounds for moral culpability and one just knows the, mark you, Scottish millionaire's family will prove as rotten as his own cheaply constructed allotments. In other words, notwithstanding the realistic dialogue and attention to period detail this is little more than The Big Sleep for the flaunt-it age, where a lesbian stag film conforms to modern porn film tropes (and confuses soft and hardcore ones at that) and where the hero can shoot the femme fatale in cold blood and still run home to the golden girl. There is nothing new here; we even open on a shot of a boxer being prepared for the ring, the curtain-raiser of countless 'thrown fight' dramas. There are a couple of sequences in the director's best style, notably a crane shot over a building which visually ties together the two plot strands that drive the movie, but even these are derivative of earlier successes in The Untouchables and Snake Eyes.