The noir genre has an impressive and magical quality to elegantly tell the darkest and most rotten aspects of contemporary society. His ideas never get old, despite the fact that the period exercise is often used so that the references to the genre remain on the flap and do not escape the viewer. And yet they remain modern and manage to communicate with a modern audience with a story that captivates.
James Ellroy’s stories are impeccable for this, capable of portraying the underworld of cities like Los Angeles with enviable clarity and strength. They’re perfectly sweet tooth for a screen adaptation, big or small, though he tends to look down on them. He does it up with one of the most masterfulan irresistible delight titled ‘LA Confidential’.
Nothing is what it seems
Its arrival on Disney+ (it was also available to watch on Amazon Prime Video) gives us a perfect excuse to remember it and recommend it to people who have not yet had the pleasure of enjoying it. Because they should see it, it is one of the must see movies of the 90sand a true phenomenon that to some extent tried to stand up to ‘Titanic’ as the phenomenon of the year at the public and industry level.
He didn’t make it, but his nine Oscar nominations and its 126 million collection (for a budget of 35) are by no means negligible. The film captivated with an impressive cast that included Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Bassinger and a Kevin Spacey who was still tolerable, but mostly hooked for his walk through a 1950s Los Angeles that was glamorous on the outside but terribly rotten on the inside. .
A setting that is a set, because its explorations of corruption in the police forces and amorality in certain circuits of the city continue to be incredibly valid. Curtis Hanson does an exercise measured to the millimeter, with an exquisite atmosphere and an exciting journey in which, in addition, the plot is the least of it. When he read Ellroy’s original novel, what he fell in love with were the characters, so complex and interestingand that is what he most tries to preserve in the adaptation.
‘LA Confidential’: in the league of the best
It plays in a league similar to Roman Polanski’s ‘Chinatown’, capable of transferring a bygone era to its moment as naturally as possible, soaking up the essence of the genre to its very bones. Hanson, who until then had carried out other intrigues of great popular importance (such as ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle‘, the rosetta stone of domestic thrillers that we now know as afternoon movies), manages to do the same with the neo-noir genre, making it tremendously accessible even without giving up its features.
Those who saw her remember her deeply until the end of their days. However, it’s the kind of movie that the Internet doesn’t tend to rescue ad nauseam, despite the fact that It has all the elements that characterize a classic. Because it is, it is an essential work of the noir genre on the big screen, and anyone should see it once in their life.
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