Thriller Thursdays: L.A. Confidential - A glitzy neo-noir classic

Intro: In our weekly column, Thriller Thursdays, we recommend specially-curated thrillers that’ll send a familiar chill down your spine.

Los Angeles has forever been synonymous with glitz and glamour. But beyond its brightest lights and shadowless streets, lies the penumbra of realities and reality checks. But when the protectors of those who revel in the lights are themselves denizens of darkness, the city’s doomsday is nigh.

The LAPD is celebrating the incarceration of Mickey Cohen, the nefarious mafia leader,  who controlled LA’s drug business, but embedded within their ranks are forces driven by ambition, ego and rage. In particular, ta few detectives, driven with different compulsions, propel the story into its sordid inevitabilities and happenstances.

L.A. Confidential is a compelling tale of three very different detectives, who become involved in the same case, called the ‘Nite Owl Massacre’, where several people get murdered the same night at a diner. There is Bud White (Russell Crowe), a cop with a short fuse, but also one with a very clear sense of integrity and justice;  Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce), an upright, stiff-necked, honest cop who incurs everyone’s wrath very quickly as he takes names of colleagues involved in a lock-up brawl, and finally Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), an attention-seeking narcotics detective who moonlights as a celebrity detective who is a consultant on an expose-it-all-type of a TV show called 'Badge of Honor'. In this smorgasbord of characters are also Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), a writer with a salacious tell-all magazine called Hush-Hush, the Chief of Police Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), a wealthy businessman Pierce Patchett (David Straithairn); and Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a callgirl who looks like Veronica Lake.

And when this group of disparate characters come together to unravel, or hide from, or run away, or even die as a result of the seedy mystery of the massacre, it culminates in a film that closely examines the consequences of their actions. Director Curtis Hanson takes pulp novelist James Ellroy’s deliciously labyrinthine story and injects it with period verisimilitude and smooth firm-handed direction — garnering dazzling performances from the entire cast. This is the underbelly of Los Angeles, beyond the spotlights of glamour, flush with sex workers, shoot-outs, corruption, depraved businessmen, seedy joints, violence, drugs, and more.

As the three colleagues-cum-adversaries combine forces to take on formidable adversaries, the film explodes with one setup after another, one battle after another, one shootout after another. Within its brutal underpinnings, LA Confidential has to be one of the most compelling movies ever made. Particularly since it cares so much for its characters and follows their lives with such keenness and acuity, it has a warm core at its centre. Basinger is moping and curious about Russell Crowe (“You are different, Officer”), and Crowe bursts several fuses at the sight of anyone being cruel to a woman. Kevin Spacey is flashy and popular, but on being asked “Why did you become a cop?” he responds in his peculiar nonchalant manner, “I don't remember” as sadness and regret fill up his face, hoping but failing to conceal the multitude of untold stories and broken dreams. And Guy Pearce decides to testify against his colleagues, as he rationalises, saying, “The other policemen think silence and integrity are the same thing,” when all that is important is that justice should be served.

LA Confidential is a film noir drenched in despair, violence, angst, and paradoxically, tenderness. The delicate romance between Crowe and  Basinger becomes a counterpoint to the all-male presence of violence and entitlement. Starting from the moment Basinger first appears as she offers to buys drinks, Crowe is smitten. They meet and Crowe asks if he can meet her again, and she shoots back with “Is it for a date or an appointment?” Their broken beings clutch at each other, and what emerges is a fledgling romance — they go to see Roman Holiday together and confess their hauntings to each other. Basinger’s Oscar-winning performance is a warm tribute to womanhood.

But this is a dark movie shot in a suffusion of real colours. Los Angeles here, as in Polanski’s Chinatown, could well be a small town with big criminals. In its examination of corruption and its inextricable and deep-rooted systemic presence, it is both cautionary and revelatory. But by never taking its eye off the fact that every tale told is a story of humans, it weaves a humane tapestry.

Its taut, complex and seamless screenplay is embellished with music completely apposite to its period as is its fine art direction. It’s hard to believe that both Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce were virtually unknown to the world till LA Confidential. They fit their screen personas so perfectly that one can virtually see their character arcs evolve as the film progresses. The brilliance of the film ekes out the vulnerability of the tough guy and the weakness of the upright.

In its cathartic climax lies the hope of karmic correction. And thus do the presence of memorable cinematic moments elevate a film above itself. LA Confidential is a film to savour.

Trivia

You can watch L.A. Confidential here 

(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of OTTplay)

(Written by Sunil Bhandari, a published poet and host of the podcast ‘Uncut Poetry’)