LA Confidential (1997), anyone else think it’s overrated?

Guy Pearce was hot. And guess which co-star groped him?

OK, and thanks for such open input. Will your "dad" be holding an "advanced," luncheon for your views, sir?

I couldn’t even finish it, it was that boring!

Superb movie

I don't think it's overrated. I think the romance plot between Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger is boring, even though they were both very good individually.

Rollo Tomasi

Yes I started a thread about it a couple of years ago, it hasn’t aged well.

My theory is that it fell out of favor due to the series Mad Men premiering about a decade after its release. Mad Men combined the thoroughly researched period furnishings and costumes of the midcentury era with very naturalistic acting. This was not something LA Confidential did; the actors in LA Confidential act like they’re in a movie. So it ended up feeling corny and artificial while Mad Men felt modern and intimate.

Compare this scene in Mad Men:

Not me. I thought it was good I thought it has held up well.

With LA Confidential

There’s a stilted quality, a very self-conscious “movieness” which makes the stakes feel lower than they should be. Because movies always fix everything by the end right? So it became dated very quickly because the much more popular and influential Mad Men showed that you could make a good looking midcentury period piece and make it feel contemporary.

Again compare LA Confidential with Chinatown which is still the gold standard of retro neonoir

The actors are very naturalistic. They have long pauses, they stammer, they feel awkward in front of each other. They don’t feel like they are reciting lines.

Never saw LA Confidential -- I've never found Kim Basinger attractive. Never saw Chinatown, although I've tried to watch it. I make it maybe 5 minutes.

But I love Mad Men -- maybe it's time to watch it again.

Mad Men has literally nothing to do with the relative merits of LA Confidential.

Chinatown is the gold standard.

Gold standard or not I bet in the past 5 years more people have watched or rewatched LA than have watched or rewatched Chinatown and I doubt it’s all that close. ( this is an opinion not a fact).

For me LA never slows but that gunfight at the motel is one fucking good gunfight. A very enjoyable movie . And that is the only thing that counts for me—-did I enjoy the movie.

The only thing remotely correct about the OP’s otherwise inane assessment is that Kim Basinger basically did win the Oscar for essentially not embarrassing herself. The rest of the cast and story was top notch. It was a far more worthy film that year than Titanic..

R13 and more people have watched or rewatched JLO’s “Hustlers” in the past five years than LA Confidential

Your point is?

I'm always surprised when people compare Chinatown to LA Confidential. One is art and the other is LA Confidential. That's not to say the latter is a bad movie, it's actually pretty good. But I don't think it's a classic the way Chinatown is.

Honestly, I felt it and Chinatown were well done but slogs. Bored to tears.

Just because Chinatown is a classic and one of a kind, doesn’t mean that L.A. Confidential is still not a great film. Both can be true. As for R14’s argument: To be polite, just because more people have seen Hustlers recently, does not make it a better film. Not remotely.

I think LA Confidential is well crafted, acted, written, etc. but that's it. It's just not very deep.

It’s in my standard rotation. I have a lot of affection for B movies with A-list stars. Or, rather, A-quality actors.

It's in my top 10 favorite movies.

Chinatown is a regular “classic” feature on Delta. LA Confidential is not. There’s a few eyeballs for ya.

Another vote in favour of LA Confidential. Chinatown is great, but LA Confidential is an entertaining and convincing noir.

And everything is far from fixed in the end, R9.

Chinatown is a very pretty movie but I've always felt like it dragged a little. It's one of those movies that I want to love but just can't get myself there. For neo-noirs (post 40s/50s) my top three would be The Long Goodbye, Romeo Is Bleeding and The Last Seduction. I'm tempted to add Blade Runner to that list but I'm sure a lot of people consider it more of a sci-fi movie even through it's a classic detective story. I can think of a lot of noirs that I like more than Chinatown.

Blade Runner is a neonoir. Almost all cyberpunk thrillers from Strange Days to Minority Report to Upgrade are neonoirs.

I liked Guy Pierce, but Crow sucked, he just played his regular hateful, violent self.

Wow, these are some of the worst takes i have ever come across. Comparing L.A. Confidential to Mad Men, a show that ran seven seasons, many of them unwatchable? Comparing it to Chinatown, claiming L.A. Confidential wasn't as authentically noir when even Pauline Kael criticized Chinatown as 'over deliberate' and openly nostalgic?

I thought Chinatown was predictable and draggy while L.A. Confidential had some of the most shocking, unexpected scenes ever filmed, assuming you never read the book. It is styllized yes, nut never false. Watching the movie for the first time I whispered to my friend, 'they even got the Los Angeles light correctly'.

At the same time I wouldn't compare L.A. Confidential, which I loved, to Chinatown, which I didn't. What's the point?

They are compared because Chinatown tends to be the yardstick which all neo-noirs are compared to. Pauline Kael was wrong about quite a few movies and I'd include Chinatown in that category. I never found LA Confidential shocking even if I thought it was well done.

Great film, but the book is far better.

[quote]Watching the movie for the first time I whispered to my friend, 'they even got the Los Angeles light correctly'.

Because it was filmed in Los Angeles.

It seriously never occurred to you that this was the reason the light was correct? The light in Los Angeles is extremely specific due to its latitude, the lack of humidity, lack of cloud cover, and the late afternoon light coming from the Pacific side with no obstructions. That is why Hollywood exists in Los Angeles. Because it has beautiful light all year round.

Even a Technicolor film from 1938 is easily identifiable as Los Angeles instead of Sherwood Forest.

Here’s a fun one, and I even remember noticing this as a kid

The chase scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit was largely filmed in England. However the final part was filmed at the Hyperion Bridge over the LA River. When they jump to these shots, the light noticeably changes to Los Angeles light.

R30 Oh fuck off with your sarcasm. L.A. was more open in the 50s, a time when miles and miles of land was razed to build tract housing. If the light wasn't actually different it felt different. I grew up there. My remark was just expressing how I thought the film recreated the feel of the time period.

On top of the asthetics, what’s so memorable about Chinatown is the outcome: the bad guy wins—evil is victorious. Watching Jake watch Noah Cross take away Katherine is *shivers*.

And LA Confidential looked correct because the location people understood that old Los Angeles looked like a much different city. For example this location shot made use of wooden Victorian buildings. Wooden Victorians were once very common in Los Angeles but are extremely rare today (was this shot in Heritage Square?) But Los Angeles in 1953 would still have old Victorians falling into disrepair so they included them.

It’s no Bunker Hill R34

Agreed, OP. The charitable thing to conclude is that, for its time, its film noir style stood out along with a generally high quality of performance, novelty of plot, and visual style. Seen today, however, those attributes of time perspective don't hold up as either particularly novel nor good.

I'm always.surprises when it makes.someone's long list of excellent films across a long span of time. It's not.

R36 the answer is simple, you know more than all those other people who don’t agree with you.

[quote]I thought Chinatown was predictable and draggy

A) you have severe ADHD if Chinatown is “draggy”

As for being predictable, the ending is still considered shocking to first time viewers

LA Confidential meanwhile has an extremely predictable and sappy “happy ending”

Fun fact: Robert Towne’s original script had Evelyn getting away to Mexico with her daughter. Polanski changed it.

Meanwhile, James Ellroy’s LA Confidential sees Dudley live. Curtis Hanson changed it to the happy ending.

[Quote] This film doesn’t hold a candle to the film noirs of the 40s and 50s.

Ok so we know you’re a big fan of turgid nonsense. Go to bed, you’re DRUNK.

[quote] Meanwhile, James Ellroy’s LA Confidential sees Dudley live. Curtis Hanson changed it to the happy ending.

Which was fine. Movies aren't books and the Dudley still gets rewarded posthumously.

Can’t beat this finale.

James Ellroy is a major dweeb who happened to write a book that inspired an amazing movie.

I like the film quite a lot--it's one of the rare films where Kevin Spacey's cynicism and snarkiness really work, especially in the Lana Turner scene. The homoerotic tension between Crowe's and Pearce's characters is really well done and surprisingly non-subtle--even without their ever kissing or fucking, it would be hard for anyone to miss it.

It's not a masterpiece, but then again I don't really think "Chinatown" is either. Both films are just very well done and thoughtful homages to noir films.