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The Black Dahlia One of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, director Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia arrives with plenty of visual flair but little narrative sense. Ultimately, James Ellroy's take on the classic unsolved L.A. murder is ruined by casting decisions which can most charitably be described as misguided. By Greg Freitas Betty Short was murdered in 1947, her body drained of blood and chopped in half, somewhat neatly, at the waist. This is fact. Everything else about The Black Dahlia is based on conjecture, some of it as old as the murder itself, much of it of recent vintage. Two books in the last five years alone have introduced new alternative killers. But the definitive tale of the Dahlia's death, the 1987 novel by James Ellroy, has little to do with finding the real killer, and everything to do with creating an intricately plotted, Chinatown-like blanket of corruption at the highest levels in post-war Los Angeles. With crackling period dialogue from screenwriter Josh Friedman, this Dahlia adaptation was originally conceived as a six hour miniseries for HBO, to be directed by David Fincher. While impossible to say whether Fincher's brand of bravura filmmaking would trump DePalma's, one can only assume that with the extra time to flesh out the novel's Byzantine plotting, Ellroy's tale would have received a less confusing treatment. Without really giving anything away, the film has a multiple reveal Scooby Doo ending which borders on parody, and then goes way beyond it. But the film is far too short to do the novel justice. What is less forgiveable is the casting. Unfortunately, comparisons to another in Ellroy's L.A. Quartet, L.A. Confidential, are inevitable. The good cop/bad cop characters, played by Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe in Confidential, are essentially recreated in The Black Dahlia, but with the bland Josh Hartnett and the erratic Aaron Eckhart instead. Likewise, the love interest, played so memorably by Kim Basinger in Confidential, becomes decidedly less interesting in the hands of Scarlett Johansson. A gifted actress without question, Johansson, at the ripe young age of 22 is already falling into Gwyneth-like mannerisms, scrunching up her face in confusion to substitute for whatever emotion is called for by the script. In the lead role of Bucky Bleichert--which calls for a hugely charismatic lead--Hartnett is simply out of his depth. (It is regrettable that Fincher favorite Brad Pitt, a fine actor with the right material, didn't give it a try.) Only Hilary Swank as the femme fatale gives her role any flavor, but she's on such a different level that she seems to be in an entirely different movie. The film's often violent set pieces are often vintage DePalma, including a stunning tracking shot which first reveals the corpse, flits ominously past crows on a rooftop, and ultimately follows our heroes into their own world before memorably uniting the strands into one. Another follows bodies floating in air, heading inexorably to a vicious demise. The entire film fits snugly, if indifferently, into the director's impressive oeuvre, a weird hybrid of The Untouchables period intrigue mixed with Body Double's mind-bending naughtiness. It isn't quite classic DePalma, but neither is it his worst (for that his adaptation of another fantastic novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, wins hands down). But he'll move on. Ellroy's Dahlia, on the other hand, won't get a second chance for quite a while, and that's a shame. |
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