L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)

[domino harvey]

Oh wow, duh. Thanks!

[hearthesilence]

I've only seen Wonder Boys once, but I agree, it made a much deeper impression, at least in memory.

L.A. Confidential was solid entertainment, Hanson did a fine job directing it and the cast was excellent, but it was also classical to a fault - whatever it wanted to say about Los Angeles, Hollywood, law and corruption or human nature doesn't seem all that new or revelatory.

[flyonthewall2983]

“We have Chinatown at home” vibes

[colinr0380]

One of the most interesting things is that Spacey's character's big scene (major spoilers) involving a turning point in the mystery got pretty much lifted wholesale for Colin Farrell's character's big scene in Minority Report (major spoilers)!

I think it is a much better (and influential, particularly over the L.A. Noire videogame) film than you are all giving it credit for, although of course awkward now and probably destined to fade into obscurity with the Kevin Spacey stuff. Although isn't one of the subplots of L.A. Confidential to do with uncovering a web of illicit shenanigans itself? And how everyone from the cops to Danny DeVito's tabloid columnist has a vested interest in perpetuating the continuation of the same until which point it suits them to reveal it all with a grand flourish and an assurance that the crime has been entirely taken care of? (In that sense at the very beginning of the film we're seeing the 'staged arrest' of the last figure being perpetuated until finally being taken down, with the arrest of Mickey Cohen being done in front of specially invited journalists).

The more disappointing part of the film is that it all has to end in a big action shootout where our two bantering 'brawn versus brain' cops who have been turned against either other finally put their differences aside to blow away the bad guys together and restore justice to the world. I don't actually think its a particularly terrible ending per se but, as we can see from this thread in particular, things just don't tie up that neatly in real life the way we may wish they do in the movies!

[The Curious Sofa]

I'm no big fan of LA Confidential or Spacey, but to suggest that this acclaimed film can't be watched anymore or deserves to fade into obscurity because of his presence is a bit OTT. As Chinatown has been mentioned, does that movie deserve to be forgotten? Considering that what Polanski did (and was convicted for in a court of law) was considerably worse than what Spacey is accused of (and has not been convicted of)? Art and film history is full of questionable individuals who abused their power (men, but not all of them); you may as well never watch another classic movie again, because there is a chance there was a sex pest in front of or behind the camera. The casting couch long precedes Harvey Weinstein. The other problem with this is that it takes more than one bad apple to make a movie, so you also cancel all the other artists, possibly good people all of them, who have put hard work into a movie.

Having listened to the podcast, what is odd is that Pearce claims that since the allegations against Spacey came to light, he wants to be more honest about his experience (I assume to do his bit for #metoo), but if anything, is even vaguer about what went down than in the TV interview from 2018, where he goes no further than describing Spacey as "handsy" and "aggressive". At the same time, he is showering praise on Russell Crowe, a man who has a well-documented history of physical violence. So is abusive behavior only bad if you are at the receiving end? If a man gropes another man, is that so much worse than punching men and injuring hotel staff by throwing phones at them?

[cdnchris]

Jesus. I watched this film not that long ago, and here I was thinking, "Man, I forgot how great this was!" and then I come on here, and everyone is saying it's "meh" to garbage. You guys are wild sometimes.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, I like L.A. Confidential. It's fun, meaty, has mostly good performances, and even the maligned climax has a cathartic finish with great photography

[colinr0380]

As Chinatown has been mentioned, does that movie deserve to be forgotten?

Considering that film has only become more relevant than ever this year with its plot involving fights over who has the controlling interest in California's precious water resources, hopefully not.

[Captain Paranoia]

I'm no big fan of LA Confidential or Spacey, but to suggest that this acclaimed film can't be watched anymore or deserves to fade into obscurity because of his presence is a bit OTT. As Chinatown has been mentioned, does that movie deserve to be forgotten? Considering that what Polanski did (and was convicted for in a court of law) was considerably worse than what Spacey is accused of (and has not been convicted of)? Art and film history is full of questionable individuals who abused their power (men, but not all of them); you may as well never watch another classic movie again, because there is a chance there was a sex pest in front of or behind the camera. The casting couch long precedes Harvey Weinstein. The other problem with this is that it takes more than one bad apple to make a movie, so you also cancel all the other artists, possibly good people all of them, who have put hard work into a movie.

That's exactly what I was thinking, especially considering that the offending person (in this case Spacey) is a cast member as opposed to the director or writer. (Admittedly, I contemplate on viewing the works of Polanski considering this as well as the severity of his actions).

[thirtyframesasecond]

I'd have thought The Usual Suspects is the more problematic film given the director involved.

[hearthesilence]

Re: The Usual Suspects, I never liked it (or anything Bryan Singer directed) so it was never an issue because I never think about it, much less wish to revisit it.

I get everyone's point, but the reason why my reaction is specific to L.A. Confidential is because you have so many scenes with just Spacey and Pearce as well as Spacey and Baker (and the scenes with the latter involve Baker's character being forced to engage in something sexual he didn't want to do). In other words, watching those scenes play out in what's a substantial part of the film would probably bring up gross reminders of what these people were doing off-screen while making the exact scenes I'm watching at that moment.

But, I also NEVER said it deserved to be forgotten or lost in obscurity, not even close. And FWIW, I get the film's beloved by many critics - in won Best Picture from both the NY and LA critics awards, and no less than Andrew Sarris was a huge fan.

[Murdoch]

Jesus. I watched this film not that long ago, and here I was thinking, "Man, I forgot how great this was!" and then I come on here, and everyone is saying it's "meh" to garbage. You guys are wild sometimes.

This was one of the high points of American 90s cinema for me circa 2010 so I'm right in your camp. It gets too over-the-top toward the end but it's still very well executed.

[flyonthewall2983]

I prefer The Usual Suspects, mostly through becoming a fan of Kevin Pollak’s show where he talked about it frequently. He didn’t indulge much into Spacey and Singer's controversies, except once towards the end of the show’s run to mention that production was shut down essentially because one had stolen the other’s young “associate”, which I hadn’t heard about before.

“I can do without it ever again” is maybe too strong for me to say about L.A. Confidential because it is objectively a great movie but not one which has the rewatchable qualities of a great number of movies that came out in the 90’s. 1997 is particularly stacked with films I regard as more crucial to my development in understanding cinema.

One movie I can probably never watch Kevin Spacey in again is Recount, the HBO movie about the GWB election fiasco. Somehow seeing him play actually decent people like the real-life counterpart is probably more cognitively difficult but I would certainly enjoy it less. Sad to say because it has an amazing cast on par with the choices of those other films, maybe even more so because of the subject matter.

Emphasis on “probably”. To demonize a work of art because of the acts of those involved in creating it, doesn’t really account for the fact the rest of whom were and likely remained good people who just happened to find common ground with those who on whatever level, aren’t. It’s more throwing the baby out with the bathwater on some level to me, than recognizing good people making a brief deal with the devil.

[hearthesilence]

I'm reluctant to call L.A. Confidential great...but that's not exactly bad or "meh" either. I would hate to use a sports analogy, but this probably gets my point across better - before Ron Santo was posthumously inducted by the veterans committee into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he had been campaigning for his induction very hard, making his bitterness very clear, but not enough sportswriters ever voted for him. One local sports anchor in Chicago was pretty clear why this wasn't such a bad slight - "I think he's very good - if it was the Hall of the Very Good, of course he'd be in, but the Hall of Fame is about the great, and most players who are really good just aren't great." I've seen the movie many times without complaint and enjoyed it every time - it was very popular when I was in school. But I've gotten more out of other work by everyone involved.

I will say there's one moment that will always stay with me:

Spoiler

When Ed Exley shoots Captain Smith in the back, I witnessed two vastly different reactions at two different screenings: one involved a theater full of adult cinephiles who remained stone cold silent. I thought it was pretty clear that Exley violated the one remaining principle he said he wouldn't break, though tbf you kind of knew he wouldn't stick to all of them when it's laid out near the start of the film. But when I saw the film in a screening filled with college and possibly high school-aged kids, a large number of them cheered heartily.

[Sloper]

I love L.A. Confidential. A lot of that has to do with the way I first saw it when I was 13: it was a welcome interruption during one of the most miserable experiences of my life, a family not-quite-holiday in New York in 1997. My brother and I saw it in the cinema, and there was something exciting about the fact that because he looked 17 we could see what was (in the U.K.) an 18-rated film. This was the same year I saw Vertigo for the first time and really started getting into old films, so I think the 1950s Hollywood setting, references to The Bad and the Beautiful, the joke about Lana Turner, etc., really appealed to me.

I was also a Kevin Spacey fan at the time, primarily because of Swimming With Sharks and The Usual Suspects (two films I’ve fallen out of love with since then). But the thing that struck me even at the time was that, while Spacey’s performance as Jack Vincennes was fine, he was totally out-classed by Crowe and Pearce. It seemed very obvious that Spacey had been cast as a big name to offset the fact that the film was essentially carried by two actors who were more-or-less unknown outside of Australia. Their performances get better with every viewing.

If anything, Spacey seemed a little mannered: I don’t think his performance is bad exactly, and he sells some key emotional moments, like when Exley asks him why he became a cop and he says, ‘I don’t remember,’ or when he looks into the barroom mirror while holding the $50 note. But there’s a key interaction between him and Matt Reynolds (the Simon Baker character) that illustrates the problem: on one level it’s a deeply affecting moment and a crucial stage in Vincennes’ development, but Spacey over-eggs it just a little bit, veering towards mawkishness. I thought this long before 2017 (especially post-American Beauty, which I hated so much that it made me re-evaluate Spacey’s earlier performances) but as hearthesilence said earlier in the thread:

you have so many scenes with just Spacey and Pearce as well as Spacey and Baker (and the scenes with the latter involve Baker's character being forced to engage in something sexual he didn't want to do). In other words, watching those scenes play out in what's a substantial part of the film would probably bring up gross reminders of what these people were doing off-screen while making the exact scenes I'm watching at that moment.

That shot of Spacey looking at Matt Reynolds, and of course the scenes showing the developing bond between him and Exley, are so essential to the emotional core of the film. I can’t not think about Spacey’s behaviour on set during these moments, and now I’ll also hear his ‘grow up, you’re not a victim’ comments in response to Pearce.

To be clear, I’m not patting myself on the back for thinking Spacey wasn’t that great before #MeToo – I still think Kirk Douglas is a great actor, still watch Polanski films, etc.. And these things can’t be too simplistically co-related…but sometimes it’s interesting not to separate the art from the artist, and I feel like there is an overlap between Spacey’s moist-eyed, self-indulgent, self-pitying, slightly bogus performance in L.A. Confidential and his reactions to these allegations. I always remember George Huang describing how Spacey yelled at him for giving him directions on Swimming With Sharks: ‘It’s in the eyes, George, it’s in the fucking eyes!’ The more attention I pay to Spacey’s eyes, the less I enjoy his acting.

I really wish David Strathairn had played Jack Vincennes. Obviously he wasn’t a big enough star, but he’s light years ahead of Spacey as an actor. He would have been perfect for the role on every level: handsome but slightly washed-up, charismatic but slightly despised by his colleagues, sardonic and world-weary but with an underlying sadness that would make his character arc believable. Imagine how Strathairn would have handled the ‘I don’t remember’ line or the interactions with Baker (or with James Cromwell) – we would have none of Spacey’s mawkishness, just a totally authentic, lived-in sadness.

It's not a perfect film otherwise: Lynn Bracken is an under-developed character, some of the stuff about race and domestic abuse feels problematic now, and while I love the climax (and agree it’s more ambiguous than ‘justice is restored’) the actual ending is a bit of a cop-out. But I can’t imagine not watching it again, it’s so beautifully constructed and compulsively entertaining.

[flyonthewall2983]

I really wish David Strathairn had played Jack Vincennes. Obviously he wasn’t a big enough star, but he’s light years ahead of Spacey as an actor. He would have been perfect for the role on every level: handsome but slightly washed-up, charismatic but slightly despised by his colleagues, sardonic and world-weary but with an underlying sadness that would make his character arc believable. Imagine how Strathairn would have handled the ‘I don’t remember’ line or the interactions with Baker (or with James Cromwell) – we would have none of Spacey’s mawkishness, just a totally authentic, lived-in sadness.

I dig his work a lot. Kind of amazing that within the time he was in both Sneakers and A League of Their Own, in consequential roles with rock-solid casts around him, that he didn’t break out more from that. I liked his casting the most in the 2014 Godzilla, very believable as a no-nonsense army guy.

I will say there's one moment that will always stay with me:

Spoiler

When Ed Exley shoots Captain Smith in the back, I witnessed two vastly different reactions at two different screenings: one involved a theater full of adult cinephiles who remained stone cold silent. I thought it was pretty clear that Exley violated the one remaining principle he said he wouldn't break, though tbf you kind of knew he wouldn't stick to all of them when it's laid out near the start of the film. But when I saw the film in a screening filled with college and possibly high school-aged kids, a large number of them cheered heartily.

Spoiler

Smith shooting Vincennes is quite the moment too. I remember reading someone describing watching it with an audience and the entire place gasped at the moment he’s shot.

[colinr0380]

I really wish David Strathairn had played Jack Vincennes. Obviously he wasn’t a big enough star, but he’s light years ahead of Spacey as an actor. He would have been perfect for the role on every level: handsome but slightly washed-up, charismatic but slightly despised by his colleagues, sardonic and world-weary but with an underlying sadness that would make his character arc believable. Imagine how Strathairn would have handled the ‘I don’t remember’ line or the interactions with Baker (or with James Cromwell) – we would have none of Spacey’s mawkishness, just a totally authentic, lived-in sadness.

I dig his work a lot. Kind of amazing that within the time he was in both Sneakers and A League of Their Own, in consequential roles with rock-solid casts around him, that he didn’t break out more from that. I liked his casting the most in the 2014 Godzilla, very believable as a no-nonsense army guy.

He's fantastic in the main role of John Sayle's very underrated Limbo (that final shot may be in the running for most powerfully enigmatic final shot in a film, or at least up there with the final shot of James Gray's The Immigrant!)

[Sloper]

Yes, Limbo is one of my favourite films - another memorable cinema experience when I first saw it in 1999. And that's another film with a sprawling cast that centres on three main characters, though in that case I think all three actors complement each other perfectly.

[The Curious Sofa]

Spoiler

I'm no big fan of LA Confidential or Spacey, but to suggest that this acclaimed film can't be watched anymore or deserves to fade into obscurity because of his presence is a bit OTT. As Chinatown has been mentioned, does that movie deserve to be forgotten? Considering that what Polanski did (and was convicted for in a court of law) was considerably worse than what Spacey is accused of (and has not been convicted of)? Art and film history is full of questionable individuals who abused their power (men, but not all of them); you may as well never watch another classic movie again, because there is a chance there was a sex pest in front of or behind the camera. The casting couch long precedes Harvey Weinstein. The other problem with this is that it takes more than one bad apple to make a movie, so you also cancel all the other artists, possibly good people all of them, who have put hard work into a movie.

That's exactly what I was thinking, especially considering that the offending person (in this case Spacey) is a cast member as opposed to the director or writer. (Admittedly, I contemplate on viewing the works of Polanski considering this as well as the severity of his actions).

I'd have thought The Usual Suspects is the more problematic film given the director involved.

I have no problem with watching a film by a problematic director or with a problematic movie star as long as I don't get the feeling that they are propagating their misdeeds through their work. And while Polanski may not be my favourite human being, he is one of my favourite film directors. My life would be poorer without his best films. I also have no desire to ever watch What?.

Also, love Limbo and David Strathairn.

[flyonthewall2983]

May I request a thread split, to keep the discussion of the film going. All this talk is going to get me to rewatch it again now soon, and it would be nice to be involved in just talking movies again.

[Matt]

[Posts from February 2025 have been moved to this thread from this thread]

[beamish14]

Yes, Limbo is one of my favourite films - another memorable cinema experience when I first saw it in 1999. And that's another film with a sprawling cast that centres on three main characters, though in that case I think all three actors complement each other perfectly.

Maybe my single favorite film of Sayles’. Love that he cast the underrated Casey Siemaszko, who’d appeared in Breaking In a decade earlier.

Bruce Springsteen’s end credits song “Lift Me Up” is an all-time great. The many saved his best songs for 90’s films (The Crossing Guard, Philadelphia, Jerry Maguire)