Recently, it appears I’ve been on a John Wayne thing. To get away from that for the moment, here’s what I wrote recently about L.A. Confidential (1997). For what it’s worth …
I’ve always been lukewarm on noir films. I prefer comedies, romances and, of course, westerns. Still there are, as we all know, some exquisite noir films (Gilda, The Big Heat, The Maltese Falcon and so on.) And really, if a movie is good, who cares about the genre?
I start with that small preface because L.A. Confidential is a noir film and, if I recall correctly, it was hyped that way back when it was released, and hyped in such a way (read “excess”) that back then I watched it with reluctance. (Back then, by the way, would be 1997.) I thought, “Oh great. Another movie that’s all about evoking an older style and achieves cleverness by how closely it accomplishes this.”
Put another way, I was expecting a lot of style and very little substance. I expected it to be visually great but with a tedious, predictable story that mimicked the structure of older films.
In some ways, that’s what L. A. Confidential does. What I had forgotten about with good noir movies is that, much like westerns, the story focuses on a moral question. The approach here, however, is quite different than in a western.
For me, a moral centre is what makes a movie compelling (assuming that the technical bits are all working at a relatively high level).
In L.A. Confidential, there are loads of moral choices. Although most of the characters have moral dilemmas, the story focuses on the characters played by Russell Crowe, Guy Pierce and Kevin Stacey. They are very different characters but they all make choices. Put simplistically, each chooses whether he’ll be a good guy or a bad guy.
It’s because the story, fairly complex, unfolds with a certain irrevocable determination that all the heavy lifting as far as costumes, sets, music and so on, elements to evoke a period, style, a kind of cinema, work. Often something period is a work of self-indulgent crap. In this case, the story demands the period look and feel and there is no sense that the filmmakers were treating themselves ahead of the audience.
The end result is a very good movie, regardless of the genre, one that’s engaging and rewarding.
I’m sure I’ve said this before but, to repeat, I’m not a film expert, a film historian, a student of the cinema. I think I watch movies the way most people do. I’m dazzled sometimes by editing, effects, cinematography, but in the end, budgets be damned: it’s a well told story I respond to.
L.A. Confidential is a well told story. As a bonus, it’s visually brilliant.
3½ stars out of 4.
