L.A. Confidential Review

Adapting Ellroy at all is a structural feat, and the solution Hanson and Brian Helgeland found is to reduce a labyrinth to three men who each embody a different corruption: Exley's careerist rectitude, White's useful violence, Vincennes's celebrity rot. Because each is defined by a flaw, the plot can be as convoluted as it likes and the audience still tracks it through character. Dante Spinotti resists the neon-and-fog reflex, so this Los Angeles is dry, bright and ordinary, which makes the brutality land harder when it arrives.

Casting two unknown Australians as the leads was a genuine risk that pays off, with Crowe playing White as coiled bulk and Pearce playing Exley as insufferably correct until circumstances sand him down. Kevin Spacey's Vincennes gets the sharpest lines and the best exit. Kim Basinger's Lynn is written thinner than the men and functions largely as a device. The Nite Owl reveal requires a lot of expository explaining in the final stretch, which is where the compression finally shows. Otherwise an exemplary studio picture.