L.A. Confidential (film)
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neonoir crime film directed, produced, and cowritten by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is loosely based on James Ellroys 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. Like the book, the film tells the story of a group of Los Angeles Police Department L.A.P.D. officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as HushHush.
In early 1950s Los Angeles, Detective Sergeant Edmund Ed Exley Guy Pearce, the son of a legendary LAPD detective, is determined to live up to his fathers reputation. His intelligence, insistence on following regulations and cold demeanor contribute to his isolation from other officers. He exacerbates this resentment by volunteering to testify in a police brutality case, insisting on a promotion to Detective Lieutenant. This goes against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith James Cromwell who states that a detective should be willing to shoot a guilty man in the back for the greater good. Exleys ambition is fueled by the murder of his father by an unknown assailant, to whom he refers as Rollo Tomasi to give him personality.Officer Wendell Bud White Russell Crowe, whom Exley considers a mindless thug, is a plainclothes officer obsessed with violently punishing womanbeaters. One such incident leads him to confront a former cop named Buzz Meeks after White sees him with women who look like Veronica Lake and Rita Hayworth. White comes to dislike Exley after Whites partner, Dick Stensland, is terminated due to Exleys testimony in the Bloody Christmas scandal. White is sought out by Smith for a job in which they harass and beat up outoftown criminals trying to fill the void left in Los Angeles following the imprisonment of Mickey Cohen for tax evasion. The Nite Owl case, a multiple homicide at a coffee shop, becomes personal after Stensland is found to be one of the victims. ........
Source: Wikipedia
