Brian De Palma is no slouch when it comes to delivering stylish, captivating films that keep his audiences entertained and yearning for more. Of that, we can be certain. Scarface is quite possibly the second greatest gangster movie ever and The Untouchables was – to say the least – spectacular among its genre. De Palma’s latest offering, The Black Dahlia, falls short of his resounding legacy. It is an under-articulated, long-winded and tiresome attempt at telling the story of possibly the most famous unsolved murder mystery in Southern California history – and I don’t mean the one related to the O.J. Simpson trial.
Based on the novel by James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia begins in Los Angeles in the late 1940’s telling the tale of two cops, Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). The unlikely combo are united by their pasts as boxers and hoisted up on a pedestal to become publicity monkeys for the LAPD, winning over the hearts of Angelinos in order to gain support for a bill that would give the PD a sizeable raise. After knocking the crap out of each other and becoming the heroes of the day, publicity whore Lee and the quiet boy scout Bucky team up as partners and hit the streets, catching felons left and right.
The other thing that they both catch is an eye for Blanchard’s young dame, Kay (Scarlett Johansson), who is as Lee would say “always in the middle, but never between us.” We all know how that one usually works out – somewhere along the line Kay is bound to become a problem. But before the issue of Kay could become a point of tension, the two are thrust into the world of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner) who has been brutally murdered. Lee and Bucky take the case, reluctantly leaving other criminals on the street in order to find out what happened to Ms. Short.
And this is where De Palma’s film slams head first into a metaphorical brick wall. All of the sudden we are diverted from one clear plot line and given multiple complex stories which are so ill-explained that it would give even the most attentive viewers a temporary case of ADD. Aaron Eckhart is devoid of his usual charisma and arrogance as Lee Blanchard. We watch as Lee slips quickly and inexplicably into the realm of obsessive over the Elizabeth Short murder for reasons which are left to the audience’s imagination – or in other words, they were left on the editing room floor next to the other parts of the film that were riveting.
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Article comments
1 - Steve C.
The critical mass complains about the supposedly-confusing plot of De Palma's flawed but worthwhile exercise in the nature of role-playing, a plot I had no trouble following. Meanwhile, the same critical mass busts a load over Brick, a film far more hollow and convoluted to far less purpose.
Sometimes I have to wonder what's in the water everyone else is drinking.
2 - Neil Miller
Steve,
When you look at a film like Brick, you see a film that does not try to do so much. It sticks to a single plot with many players, many motives, and ultimately many roles in the wrongdoing. The Black Dahlia, on the other hand, attempts to tell at least two completely separate story lines at once, and it could have worked had both story lines been better articulated - but then the movie would have been 3 hours long. But at least it would have made more sense...
See what I mean?
3 - Steve C.
Not really, no.
Bucky involving himself with Madeline's oddball family is a digression, not an entirely different storyline, along the lines of how Brendan becomes a party to the drug deal in Brick. There's only one story going on in The Black Dahlia, there just happens to be other stuff on the margins that can be mistaken for other plotlines if you think they're important (hint: they're not). Everything in the film eventually dovetails into the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Brick has a similar structure plus even more marginalia than Dahlia, but the difference is that Brick tries to make the distracting material actually mean something. Which is why, to me, it's a far more muddled affair.