Keep It Confidential

I guess I just don't like "film noir" very much. After crapping out with other praised examples of the genre (including Chinatown), I decided to take a chance on one of the newer "classics," L.A. Confidential.

It had all the ingredients for the stew. Crooked cops, incorruptably good cops, gangs of criminals, a femme fatale. This one even had a plot that could be followed comprehensibly. And it was still incredibly boring. The story unspooled heedless of pacing, a mystery too stalled to engage, suspense too muted to grip. The occasional scene of action would materialize, but drama would soon hibernate again until the final act -- a strange bloodbath that seemed almost out of place compared to the languid dialogue that had gone before.

Some of the acting is pretty good here. James Cromwell is fantastic as the chief of police. Guy Pearce is effective as the "squeaky clean" type of cop at the forefront of investigating the big case. Kevin Spacey is fairly middle of the road, never hitting a false beat, but neither ever hitting a really strong one -- this is far from his best work. Russell Crowe does the least "stretching" of his entire career to play a hothead cop that likes beating on people. And Kim Basinger? Well, she's come 14 years and a long way since her painfully bad performance in Never Say Never Again, but I still fail to see what about this movie allowed her to attached "Academy Award Winner" to the front of her name.

But boring with mostly good acting is still boring. L.A. Confidential waits until far too late to get interesting. I rate it a C-.