"Good Cop/Bad Cop"
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What You Need To Know:
Director Curtis Hanson expertly weaves loose story ends into quite a quilt of murder, conspiracy and intrigue. LA CONFIDENTIAL is worthy of recognition for clever conventional storytelling, with the warning about excessive violence as usual. Containing dozens of graphic murders, and expletives, LA CONFIDENTIAL is a dramatically engrossing movie which lacks any sense of God’s presence, love or power to effect justice. Furthermore, there is no redemption. None of the police officers, who daily deal in life and death situations in this movie have any encounter with or make the slightest reference to God
Content:
(Ro, LLL, VVV, S, NN, A, D, M) Romantic worldview of good cops rooting out corrupt cops; 23 obscenities & 2 profanities; man shoots men, men shoot men with machine guns, man fights man, man stabs man, & man hits man; implied sex between man & girlfriend, & between man & prostitute; blurred pornographic photos, upper female nudity & upper male nudity; alcohol consumption; and, drug use
More Detail:
Just as 1973’s excellent Robert Towne-written CHINATOWN took audiences on a circuitous detective chase around the diversion of precious water in 1930’s Los Angeles, clever, James Ellroy-conceived LA CONFIDENTIAL takes viewers on another detective chase in and around 1950’s Los Angeles. In sharp contrast to the relative peace of private detective Nicholson’s personal vendetta against a mysterious, powerful criminal in CHINATOWN, the cops who pursue the mysterious criminal mastermind in LA CONFIDENTIAL use their guns so much that viewers leave the theater feeling stunned and dazed. At least thirty people get killed in the course of this movie, including an indeterminate number of dead in the finale.
Whereas water was the issue in CHINATOWN, jailed mobster Mickey Cohen’s prostitution and drug business is the issue in LA CONFIDENTIAL. Who’s going to muscle in on his action when the LA Times reports that the famous criminal was arrested for tax evasion in the mid 1950’s? The suspense propels the story forward like a rocket, breaking through normal police department routine and forcing officers to reevaluate evidence they once thought was rock solid.
Following a pleasing montage of 1950’s advertisements showcasing Los Angeles as an urban utopia of balmy weather, orange groves and ocean waves, LA CONFIDENTIAL begins on a Christmas day as two detectives bring in liquor for the boys to drink back at the station party. Intoxicated, some of the officers wreak vengeance against Latino thugs who beat up other policemen. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) and Bud White (Russell Crowe) take opposite sides in the ensuing police investigation, with White refusing to implicate his buddies, and Exley declaring he’ll name names. Wise Captain Smith asks Exley if he’s willing to endure the hatred of the rest of his comrades, and he says he is ready.
A massacre occurs in a restaurant. Six patrons are found murdered, including on off-duty officer, who was White’s patrol mate. Whodunit? The story meanders around several promising suspects, but alights on three African-Americans who were seen in the vicinity, driving a suspicious car. Exley coaxes dramatic confessions from two of the three and receives a hero’s commendation. Case closed. Or is it?
Both Exley and White have second thoughts. Something is wrong. Someone may be manipulating events for his own benefit. Who? Why? As Exley and White begin to connect things together, they realize they may be pawns in a giant conspiracy. They both fall in love with the same beguiling woman, Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), and have to confront their mutual antipathy.
Director Curtis Hanson expertly weaves loose story ends into quite a quilt of murder, conspiracy and intrigue. LA CONFIDENTIAL is worthy of recognition for clever conventional storytelling, with the warning about excessive violence as usual.
The problem is that there is no redemption. None of the police officers, who daily deal in life and death situations in this movie have any encounter with or make the slightest reference to God. This just doesn’t wash. Many real-life policemen and women know the utter frailty of life and do not hesitate to call on God frequently in the course of their sometimes harrowing days of meting out justice to offenders, but Hollywood doesn’t know this fact of life.
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