Number 5: L.A. Confidential (1997)

The Spacester

Kevin Spacey either was born to play this role, or he is a ridiculously talented actor. I am told the latter cannot be true (I am never told why, but I am told) so he must have been born to play this role. His cocky indifference and smooth coolness seem so natural that I would be shocked to meet him and discover he is neither of those things, even though I am fairly certain he is neither of those things.

While every character in L.A. Confidential is well-written and superbly acted, Jack Vincennes is the Han Solo of film noir. He doesn’t remember why he became a cop, he doesn’t do a very good job of it, but there’s something about him…

Too Sordid, Not Sordid Enough

If the Maltese Falcon is not the best film noir ever made, L.A. Confidential probably is. Chinatown can suck it. (Films noir might not have to be constantly pitch black, but it does benefit, from, you know, a bit of “noir” now and then, which Chinatown fails to provide.)

Some people don’t like L.A. Confidential just because it has a happy ending. I would first argue that any movie ending with fifty-odd more people dead than when it began is not meeting a very stringent requirement for “happy”. Secondly, I would argue that this garbage about every movie needing to be moody and lugubrious and macabre from beginning to end is nonsense. Schindler’s Freaking List is sometimes denigrated for being too hopeful. Film critics must comprise an utterly depraved, depressed bunch, which can’t imagine meaning or realism in any narrative that doesn’t involve rape and drugs and evil winning the day (not that L.A. Confidential doesn’t involve rape and drugs and evil.)

And I am sure a large contingent of non-critics believe that L.A. Confidential is an acid trip for the reprobate, full of nothing but licentiousness and vice from beginning to end. G.K. Chesterton had a line about the Catholic Church being derided by some as too liberal and others as too conservative. I don’t remember the line, but it was a good one. I’m sure it would apply analogously here, as well. If I could remember. Dangit.

The Click of a Shotgun

I find gunfights to be tedious. They get absurd very quickly, they seem staged at the best of times and hackneyed almost all of the time. It takes talent to make a good gunfight. Curtis Hanson directed L.A. Confidential. Based on his filmography, I would never have guessed he had talent but for this movie, and these gunfights. When the click of a shotgun echoes from underneath the floorboards, I think my head exploded. The movie had already convinced me. I was already sold. The majestic shots of light filtering in through bullet holes, complete with Tyndall’s effect everywhere (Tyndall has to be one of my favorite names ever, if only for the effect which is named after him) had already won me over, and yet the moments continue.

At some point in The Godfather, viewers watching for the first time have to wonder: how many more timeless quotes are coming? But they never really stop. L.A. Confidential is just like that, but with shots and sounds instead of lines.

Though the lines are pretty good, too.

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