ANNA WEBBER
Assistant A&E Editor
“The Black Dahlia” is the puzzle solver and mystery lover’s cinematic dream come true but requires a brutally strong stomach and a highly involved mind.
For people who would rather not witness a sweet young woman tortured and slain, skip “The Black Dahlia.” The last scene will leave you with the most gruesome of images, turning this mystery thriller into a bloody nightmare.
This 121-minute film noir is a convoluted mess in terms of plotline, and it clearly lacks coherence. It is psychologically complex, taking on more problems and twists than it knows how to handle, causing it to seem chaotic and disjointed. The film noir was a popular type of motion picture in the 1940s and 1950s, often filmed in urban settings with extensive use of shadows, cynical in outlook, and featuring antiheros.
In “The Black Dahlia,” director Brian De Palma applies an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired touch to James Ellroy’s fictionalized novel about one of the most notorious and enduring of Hollywood’s unsolved mysteries. The film tangles a fictional tale of two detectives around the real facts of Elizabeth Short’s murder in 1947.
The book was optioned in 1986, but it took 20 years before the story made its silver screen debut.
In January of that year, the disfigured, chopped up body of a 22-year-old actress who came to Hollywood with stars in her eyes, was found mutilated, bisected at the waist, and laid out in pieces in a vacant lot in downtown Los Angeles. Elizabeth “Betty” Short’s body shows the depravity human beings are capable of, stirring up thoughts and images that are sure to make one sick.
The movie was exceptionally well-cast. Aaron Ekhart and Josh Hartnett play the fictional investigators, Sgt. Leland “Lee” Blanchard and Officer Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert. The two cops are not only partners, but best friends, as well as famous competing boxers, “Mr. Fire” and “Mr. Ice.” They are determined to find out who murdered Elizabeth Short, but the story becomes less about discovering the murderer and more about what these two go through while investigating and what it does to them psychologically.
Eckhart, recently seen as a livewire lobbyist in “Thank You For Smoking,” is the uncontrollable member of the team, driving himself hauntingly mad over the Short murder. Former teen heartthrob, Hartnett is the introverted younger cop, the main protagonist that the film follows.
Scarlett Johansson plays Kay Lake, Lee’s girlfriend. A palpable romantic tension exists between Kay and Dwight, and their love triangle thickens and gets messy.
Mia Kirshner’s performance as the ill-fated Betty Short was intense, doomed from the start. Her character is revealed through black and white screen tests, where the director talks to her about her boyfriends and her life, and she exposes her vulnerability.
Hilary Swank plays Betty Short’s look-alike, Madeleine Linscott, and is inextricably woven into this nonsensical story as the sexually audacious daughter of a wealthy Los Angeles builder.
Though the confusing screenwriting was sub par and not as deeply compelling as the book is intended to be, the acting was powerful. But after awhile the drama gets entirely too drawn-out, making the audience wonder when it is going to end.
And then it does end, with a bloodcurdling last scene and without any finality.
“The Black Dahlia” bubbles and boils with its sepia tinted atmosphere as the lighting and costuming create an air of realism over the movie. De Palma creates a smoky reality in the film — not one of fantasy, but one that is exceptionally otherworldly and eerie.
If De Palma did not throw everything at the screen without making sure it stuck, it could have been a serious representation of the underbelly of post World War II Hollywood. Instead, the film did not offer much insight into exposing the era’s Hollywood mystery.
De Palma’s past films encompass a short range of film style. He has directed about 22 in all, including “Scarface,” “Mission Impossible,” “The Untouchables” and “Wild Things.”
The movie’s third act is, to say the least, excessive. Most of the action happens then, and while some of the ends are tied, albeit loosely, overall the film lacks resolution. It is one of those movies that are so engaging and thrilling the whole way through and then just surprisingly, and disappointingly, ends.
9-28-2006
