The contrast in lead characters was brilliant! The timeline felt real and there was enough well placed humour to keep it from being overwhelmingly dark!
One of the most hard-hitting, compulsively watchable movies of the '90s is this complex story of crime and police corruption amid lavish life-styles in and around the Hollywood of the 1950s. Never read the James Ellroy novel but I understand it's even more complex and contains even more sub-plots than the film--so you have to admire the screenplay that manages to dovetail all the main details together in a way that leads to a smashing climax. Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey do standout jobs in the leads--and Guy Pearce is riveting as the intensely ambitious man who eventually joins forces with Crowe to solve the crime. James Cromwell is chilling as the Chief of Detectives, as is Danny DeVito as a tabloid journalist. Kim Basinger is good as the Veronica Lake look-alike--but did she really deserve an Oscar for this? This kind of hard-hitting shoot-em-up melodrama is a throwback to the Cagney and Robinson crime epics of the '30s--but the gore is more graphic and the sadism more intense. Not one for the kiddies--but mature audiences should find this a knockout.
