The novel was long considered unfilmable, but that was no obstacle for one of the best films of all time. Read here why the star-studded thriller is worth seeing
You can stream one of the best films of all time on Disney+: L.A. Confidential takes you into the moral quagmire of the dream factory with a first-class ensemble. The neo-noir thriller has been nominated for an Oscar nine times. If there hadn’t been a little film called Titanic in 1997, it would certainly have won more than two of them.
Streams on Disney+: What’s L.A. Confidential about?
The dream factory doesn’t just produce rosy stories, as this trip to Los Angeles in 1953 shows. At the center of the story are three extremely different cops who initially have nothing to do with each other: the career-minded Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), brute Bud White (Russell Crowe) and the vain Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey).
Watch the trailer for L.A. Confidential:
They pursue their own suspicious cases, don’t always play by the rules and have made themselves at home in this city ruled less by angels and more by mob bosses. After the death of gangster Mickey Cohen, however, the murders in the underworld become more frequent. When a massacre in a café is swept under the carpet all too quickly, they begin to doubt the official story. But no one suspects the extent of the conspiracy.
This is why the neo-noir thriller with Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger is worth it
James Ellroy’s novel City of Devils, published in 1990, was initially considered unfilmable for one simple reason: it was far too complex for a feature film. The novel spans over eight years and combines real crimes with Hollywood history to paint a social panorama of the USA after the Second World War.
Today, L.A. Confidential would probably be immediately adapted as a series (a series reboot was once planned). Fortunately, things were different back then: Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson, who also directed, worked for two years on the script, which was supposed to squeeze L.A. Confidential into a movie running time in a meaningful way. And they succeeded.
Together, they brought Ellroy’s dark true crime vision to the screen, uniting a multi-layered cast of characters from the Hollywood Hills to the depths of this nightmarish city.
L.A. Confidential streams with a subscription to Disney+
The crime thriller is a masterpiece of efficiency
L.A. Confidential is one of those movies where every other peripheral character could carry their own story. This is a testament to the efficient mastery of this film, which explores the dark edges and niches of the city with its driving narrative, roaming through the bars, studios and parties, and from this rather incidentally assembles the image of an entire era.
(Kim Basinger as Veronica Lake Double in L.A. Confidential)
This great neo-noir thriller, which appears in numerous lists of best films, is enhanced by the ensemble cast, which is top-class right down to the supporting roles. Kim Basinger (who later won an Oscar), Danny DeVito and James Cromwell, among others, complete the cast. Not to mention the nervous score by legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith and the elegant camera work by Dante Spinotti. Perfection is rarely achieved in cinema, but in L.A. Confidential, everyone involved came very close.
