Category: Drama - Feature Film-drama - Movie - Mystery / Suspense / Thriller
Availability: 26 December 2006
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DVD The Black Dahlia (Widescreen Edition)
The Black Dahlia drips with film noir atmospherics as it unspools a lurid and complicated story taken from James Ellroy's true-crime-inspired novel of the same name. Two boxers-turned-cops--Lee "Mr. Fire" Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart, Thank You For Smoking) and Bucky "Mr. Ice" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett, Black Hawk Down)--are morally tested as they pursue the killer of a young would-be actress, grappling with corruption, narcissism, stag films, and family madness along the way. L.A. Confidential turned Ellroy's heated prose into a taut, compelling movie, but The Black Dahlia collapses like a soggy meringue. Director Brian De Palma (who once made such vibrant, entertaining movies as Carrie and The Untouchables) can't muster the energy to craft one of his trademark bravura action sequences and seems outright bored by the more mundane tasks of shaping performances and establishing mood. The actors flounder; Eckhart seems to be emoting for two, perhaps to compensate for Hartnett's bland lack of affect; even actresses as dependable as Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) and Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry) give clumsy, unconvincing performances. The one exception is an unsettling performance by Mia Kirshner (Exotica) as the doomed actress, seen only in perverse screen tests and stag films. The story is incomprehensible (and when you can follow it, it's silly); the dialogue is atrocious; the characters make hardly any sense from scene to scene. The movie is, however, good for many moments of absurd camp, such as when Bucky enters the most lavish, palatial lesbian bar you'll ever see, featuring a Busby-Berkeley-style stairway of smooching babes and a crooning k.d. lang. --Bret Fetzer
Review(s): DVD The Black Dahlia (Widescreen Edition)
WORST MOVIE I EVER SAW
I THOUGHT THEY HAD ALOT OF NERVE CALLING THIS MOVIE THE BLACK DAHLIA.
I THINK ABOUT A WHOLE 15 MINUTES DEALT WITH THE CASE. I READ ALOT OF DIFFERENT BOOKS ON THE MURDER AND THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS A RIP-OFF. WHEN I WENT AND SAW THIS MOVIE A GOOD NUMBER OF PEOPLE WALKED OUT. DON'T WASTE 2 HOURS OF YOUR LIFE VIEWING THIS PIECE OF CRAP THEY CALL A MOVIE!
as bloodless and lifeless as the title character
Granted we realise that De Palma has had more hits than misses in his career but when he hits, he does it so well and with great movies like Scarface and The Untouchables on his CV, I for one thought Ellroy's The Black Dahlia would be a great fit. I loved the book but realise that Ellroy's prose and complex plotting do not make for easy transition to the screen. But it can be done. Hello LA Confidential. And so the incomprehensible mess that is The Black Dahlia is just a major, major disappointment. Even for one who has read the book it is unforgivably confusing! The film seems to have no focus and despite it looking fabulous it is completely devoid of life. And that's all before we get to the last 30 minutes! Now I love high camp as much as the next person but the film's last scene is just laughable - and unfortunately not in a good way. A shame. A terrible shame.
i can only say...
i walked into this film not knowing anything about de palma, nothing of his history, his repetoire, anything...not a pre-conception in my head...
much less any expectations or delusions...actually, well, one expectation, and only one, and that was the i expected to experience a film; to be entertained...it seems, of late especially, that viewers obstruct their subjective minds with objective issues, such as the actors and their track record, the director and his...etc...
i know all too well, that scenes with films (and even entire movies) can be and are crafted for the simple purpose to showcase an actor(s) aptitude that is ment to shine beyond simply rendering the character...and i will be the first to rip a horrible film, if it is horrible to me, as i did with "Crash," which is one of the genus of films that i mentioned (empty storyline, sheened over with a few roles written to display acting of a high caliber, beyond simply illustrating the plot...).
i might be typing somewhat coherently now, but my mind is hopelessly disjointed and incoherent, and i suppose that is why this film seemed so (as one previous reviewer put it) "intoxicating"...of course, i knew the dialogue of hartnett's, in parts, was so unabashedly cliche', in the whole private-eye-inner-dialogue, yet, i didnt expect anything more of the film...i didnt expect it to be new, for its precepts to be wholly original, as nothing, especially in the film world, is wholly original, and writing a story a certain way for the sake of trying to achieve profoundess or originality, is stupid and renders the story impernanent and often crippled...yet, all i saw in this was the story, and its darkened hues and rendering, going from the daylight gleam of the first 4th further and frther into black dissolution...the actors flailing and tripping and misfiring, which only seemed to fit the story as it became more and more depraved...
this film was an experience for me, and i have seen many films, only few of which really were an "expierence"...this film so enticed me...the emtpy theater i saw it in only proppeled me into the story, losing myself in its incoherence...i saw it all, all things you and everyone else get so upset about, and i didnt care, i had no reason to...the film told a story, and scenes, as you say, didnt overstay their welcome...that is one thing that surpised me, and that was that no matter how powerfully a scene was enacted and rendered, or how "weak", it left abruptly or right on time, which is better than a scene overstaying, i suppose...the spastic love scenes and the strange, unlikely plot twists only ensnared me more, for some subjective reason...
all i can say is that i think this film is an achievement, the story, the performances of the actors, even despite what you say, were all achievements to my ken...and, best of all, i walked out of this film, my only expectation completely surpassed and fulfilled...film noir? couldnt name any film noir other than black and white films...de palma? what did he do before this? once again, through my nescience of certain conventions of film, i maybe expierenced something very different from what most others here did, and i just felt the need to protect the expierience within this film, and also maybe try to turn a new view upon the perspectives most of you are reviewing and perceiving from...which is sort of fused, as i said previously, with objectively-inspired pre-conceptions on what this film should have been...and not what it was...not seeing characters, but rather seeing only acting and how it wasn't "this" or "that"...i saw a film-a story with characters-and read like a novel...an aproach i usually take to films, and, for whatever reasons, this film was one of the few which gave such good results...
sure, the film might be terrible to your vein of thinking and consideration, but at least try to see it as a singular achievement, and not let pre-conceived notions tell you what the film is or isn't...
thanks...
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