A movie review

Los Angeles is a city that doesn't want to remember its past. It has one, and it's pretty well documented in such lovely tourist destinations as the La Brea Tar Pits, Olvera Street, William Mulholland and his legacy, and a bunch of other things. Oh, and Hollywood.

Its past includes some pretty bizarre murders. William Desmond Taylor is an example, as is Virginia Rappe. The Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate et al. are probably the best example.

But one murder that still fascinates those knowledgable about L.A. history, and probably the most bizarre single murder is the Black Dahlia. Born Elizabeth Short in Massachusetts, she moved west in the 1940s to become an actress. She was a drifter but not a prostitute. Her body was found in two pieces in a vacant lot in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. The murder is officially unsolved, although given the fact that it's been nearly 60 years, it's unlikely that anyone will be brought to justice; the case seems destined for the Jack the Ripper-style theories but no definite culprit. (For the truly interested, here is the FBI's file on her murder.)

Some 40 years after the murder, noir writer James Ellroy published The Black Dahlia, now made into a movie starring Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johanssen, and Mia Kirshner. The novel is excellent. The movie, sad to say, is not.

It is possible to make a movie from an Ellroy novel. It was done quite successfully with L.A. Confidential, for my money one of the best recent noir films. It can be done.

Unfortunately, it can't be done by Brian DePalma, who also directed Scarface, Carlito's Way, and Dressed to Kill. In fact, a quick once-over of his filmography reveals that his most famous films are known for violence. And so it is with The Black Dahlia. From the beginning, gore pervades the movie like an unwritten, unwanted character. Even as Short enters the scene, her corpse is treated not with respect, but as a piece of meat. In the vacant lot, the audience doesn't see it, but a crow lands to peck at it. When the body is finally shown, it's on an autopsy table in two discrete pieces, and we see all of her facial injuries. "Graphic" doesn't do the violence justice. It's violence as pornography. It doesn't advance the plot or clarify things. It's there just to be there. That was strike one.

Strike two was the very confusing plot. L.A. Confidential's writers cut a lot out of the original story to come up with a small handful of cogent plots. Josh Friedman's adaptation of The Black Dahlia tried to use all of the novel's plotlines. The end result is a muddled story that was hard to follow, and that didn't give any necessary back story. I've read the novel numerous times and still couldn't follow the movie. I felt like I needed to take notes for future reference; if there had been a quiz at the end of the movie, I wouldn't have passed it.

Finally, the acting was horrible. It was mostly flat and without any sort of inflection; it was as though the actors couldn't stand to be around each other and resorted to the flat affect of forced civility.

So, with three strikes, this one's outta here. Save your money and if you must, wait for it to come out on cable or Netflix. Spend the money on the novel instead. It's worth it.