L.A. Confidential is still one of the defining films of the 1990s, earning nine Oscar nominations and all-around acclaim for its period detail and charismatic performances; it’s also still easily one of the best crime films of all time. Much of that credit goes to Curtis Hanson‘s smooth, confident direction and Brian Helgeland‘s crackling, pulpy script, based on an even pulpier novel by the legendary James Ellroy. However, there’s one performance every viewer remembers, and it’s a young Russell Crowe as the principled but volatile Officer Bud White.
Just two years prior, Crowe hammed it up into the heavens as the virtually-generated villain Sid 6.0 in the Denzel Washington sci-fi thriller Virtuosity. But here, he channeled a similar iciness to different ends, while still giving his character a righteous and tragic-feeling sense of humanity. White is largely portrayed as a monster for much of the film, but ends up a principled hero alongside Guy Pearce‘s do-gooder Ed Exley. The entire film is a masterstroke of casting, storytelling, and production design — and it’s never a bad time for a rewatch.
Why ‘L.A. Confidential’ Remains One of the Most Rewatchable Films of All Time
L.A. Confidential tells a traditional noir detective story, but suffuses it with such style and malevolence through Dante Spinotti‘s production design and Hanson’s direction that it feels like a timeless, monolithic epic about the evil men do. A corrupt police force is in league with an early tabloid (represented by a delightfully amoral Danny DeVito), and is far more concerned with headlines and arrest shots than actually protecting the public. But when Pearce’s straight-man Exley is paired with the much more volatile Bud White (he really, really hates men who hit women) to solve a massacre in a diner that’s too horrific to be glossed over, they unwind a conspiracy that reaches all the way to a high-end brothel featuring women who have received plastic surgery to look like famous starlets, and eventually back into the department’s top brass itself.
What Hanson delivers, though, is scene after impeccable scene, with every member of the cast and crew firing on all cylinders. From the cops celebrating Christmas with pilfered liquor while they brutalize inmates, to the massacre itself, to Kevin Spacey‘s sleazy celebrity cop making deals with DeVito to grab photos of celebs caught in compromising positions, to White’s explosive rage when he catches a woman-beater, to the reveal of lugubrious pimp Pierce Patchett’s mansion lifestyle — it all sings from moment one. The film is also so good at misdirection and so moment-to-moment enthralling that it’s surprisingly to easy to forget — even on the umpteenth watch — the shocking climax.
Russell Crowe’s Bud White Gives the Film Much of Its Power
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures- Image via Warner Bros.
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- Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures- Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
- Image via Warner Bros.
- Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
- Image via Warner Bros.
- Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Image via Warner Bros.
Image via Warner Bros. PicturesCrowe’s performance of Bud White is part of what gives L.A. Confidential its subversive staying power, as his quick-to-violence meathead proves to have more heart than almost any other character by the film’s conclusion. The first time we meet him, White is glowering straight into the camera, with Crowe just about burning a hole into the screen. Soon, he’s ripping the Christmas lights down off a house in which a woman is being abused by her husband. After brutally beating the man, he gently lifts the lights to allow the woman to walk out, showing so much about his character in a few short moments.
He remains a gruff and violent, almost robotic presence for most of the film — except when dealing with Kim Basinger’s high-class sex worker Lynn Bracken, who has her own tragic past and has been surgically altered to resemble Veronica Lake. With her, White shows a much more vulnerable side, and it’s here that Crowe’s range showed itself in spades — and very early in his career. The beating, white-hot heart of a very cold-blooded noir, Crowe channeled everything that made him a movie star into a single performance. And it helped make L.A. Confidential into the entertainment sensation it remains almost 30 years later.
Today, Crowe and the late Curtis Hanson’s undisputed masterpiece is streaming — and constantly calling out for a rewatch — on Prime Video.
L.A. Confidential
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