‘L.A. Confidential’ at 25
(CNN) Movies are about more than awards, but the films that walk away with Oscars is one of the way of distinguishing years in everything from time-capsule radio contests to greeting cards.
So it’s worth a moment, 25 years after its debut, to give some love to “L.A. Confidential,” the film noir adaptation of James Ellroy’s tale of corruption in the city of Angels that seemingly did everything right, only to be washed over by the understandable wave of enthusiasm that surrounded James Cameron’s massive hit, “Titanic.”
Directed by the late Curtis Hanson , “L.A. Confidential” didn’t walk away from the Academy Awards empty handed, taking trophies for adapted screenplay and co-star Kim Basinger as the proverbial call girl with a heart of gold, and a striking resemblance to Veronica Lake.
Yet even that doesn’t really do justice to a film that transformed a pair of young Australian actors, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, into stars, elevated the career of Kevin Spacey (before other off-screen issues intervened) and represented the best adaptation of Ellroy’s idiosyncratic books, while shining a light on issues like race relations and policing in L.A.’s history.
The basic premise involved stolen heroin from real-life mobster Mickey Cohen, and a series of murders related to the theft and a war to replace Cohen within the city’s criminal hierarchy. The investigation eventually swept up a trio of officers, turning them into unlikely allies in seeking to expose the truth.
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