Black Dahlia

Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson    d/Brian De Palma

This looked like a modern-day noir...with beautiful photography, LA locations, sleazy underbelly characters and sets, grotesque murder mystery, James Ellroy story, decadent richies...

But it really sucked. Plot was much too complex...it was just barely possible to follow along when all the reveals piled up at the end. The two leads were very pretty but their acting skills were poor...I longed for the gravitas of a Bogart or Mitchum, the sultriness of Lana Turner.  The whole film felt like an elaborate contrivance...an attempt to copy a genre rather than tell a real story. And the sad thing was that this was taken from a unsolved murder.

DePalma has done some fine work (Obsession, Blow-out) but not for quite a while. Here he had a big budget, tried to pack too much in and failed. Too bad.

3