L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)

At the time of L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson was a hack for hire, directing, admittedly, rather good yet conventional thrillers with the likes of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and The River Wild. In adapting James Elroy's labyrinth novel (if you think the film's plot was hard to follow, the book is an almighty cluster fuck of sub-plots and back-stories) he somehow managed to do what Peter Jackson eventually did with his impossibly brilliant Lord of the Rings Trilogy: not only make the unfilmable filmable but condense it down to it's bare bones structure without compromising the integrity of the source material.

In short, L.A. Confidential is arguably the greatest crime film of the last twenty years. Even author James Ellroy himself, a bizarre character who's notoriously difficult to please and says fuck lots, quite happily admits its brilliance. It's dense, terrifically written and features star turns from both Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe (both relative unknowns at the time). Whilst it was inevitable that Titanic would sweep the Oscars come gong night, it's good to know that this has gone down in history as the (much) better film if not the best film nominated that year.

Good old fashioned Hollywood at its best. In an ideal world, all films will be this good.

5/5