74 out of 80 people found the following review helpful:

The Black Dahlia

SAI81 from from Tonbridge, 17th September, 2006

I was really excited about this one. James Ellroy's book is dense and brilliant, yes it looked all but impossible to carve a movie out of it but it had been done with LA Confidential, why not this one too?. Reasons for optimism piled up: Brian DePalma, back on the kind of film that made his name, a cast full of talent (and Josh Hartnett), posters and stills that suggested the macabre mood of the book had been done justice to. Where did it all go wrong? Elizabeth Short was an aspiring actress who, on January 15th 1947, was found dead in Crenshaw Los Angeles. She had been cut in half, her organs ripped out, her body drained of blood and her mouth slit open ear to ear. The killer was never caught or identified. Ellroy's book and DePalma's film don't attempt to tell the real story, instead they use this crime as a jumping off point for a complex noir. Ellroy's Dhalia is a thick book, stuff would always need removing, but DePalma and screenwriter Josh Friedman have started in the wrong places. Almost all detail of the investigation is gone from the film. The Dahlia is a mere cameo, even as a presence, and seems incidental to events. This is a catastrophic miscalculation for several reasons. First of all the romantic and other entanglements of the two cops working the Dahlia case (Hartnett and Eckhart) an ex gangster's mol (Johannson) and a society girl (Swank) who knew Elizabeth Short aren't as interesting and, frankly, we've seen it before. The other problem that dropping most of the actual detective work from the film gives DePalma is that it makes the final act utterly ludicrous. The whodunnit is solved in a way that barely connects with anything else in the movie and is then explained by people we've barely met with motives that beggar belief. On the plus side you'll never find a Brian DePalma film looking rubbish and this is no exception. The evocation of period is excellent and the whole film looks stunning (though DePalma's still stealing, look for shots from Double Indemnity and Vertigo) and this is where the chief pleasures of the film are found as there's precious little else to admire. Hartnett is a blank presence as Bucky Bleichert ambling through every scene with the same expression and the same tone. Johannson is fine, she looks the part certainly, but she's little of consequence to do and, honestly, I'd rather watch Barbara Stawyck than watch Johannson trying to channel her. Hillary Swank is dreadful. She chooses a strange clipped accent that comes and goes more or less as it pleases and decides that's about enough as far as acting goes. However the worst performance comes from a ludicrously OTT Fiona Shaw as Swank's mother, you'll want to strangle her the second she speaks. There are two performances though which keep the film from being more or less a dead loss on a performance level. Eckhart is teriffic in his limited screentime as Lee Blanchard, his coiled spring nergy bringing the film a fire it otherwise lacks. Even better is a film stealing Mia Kirshner as Betty Short. glimpsed in movies and audition reels (with Brian DePalma, offscreen, playing the director). She's wonderful as the innocent adrift, desperate to make it. The Black Dhalia is a mess and that's a real shame as there's a truly great film in Ellroy's novel. Hopefully the upcoming film that puports to adress the real facts of the case will better serve Betty Short.

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30 out of 32 people found the following review helpful:

Stylish disaster

GreenwichPaul from , 19th February, 2007

DePalma obviously spent a great deal of time and effort ensuring that his neo noir looked great. If only he could have put as much effort into the film's structure it may have been watchable, but, as it is, this is something of a disaster. The Black Dahlia is badly paced, poorly scripted and hosts a range of acting styles that suggests that DePalma gave no direction to his actors; indeed, by the time Fiona Shaw starts camping it up you wonder if she had wandered in from a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, This clearly could have been a terrific film and at times the darkness of the story and the superb cinematography hint at what could have been but that is little compensation for such a tiresome mess.

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25 out of 33 people found the following review helpful:

Slow. Dull. Poor. Embarrassing.

a Vagrant from London, UK, 16th September, 2006

I watched this at the cinema yesterday. To say it was a waste of £7.20 is an understatement. I seriously do not recall being in such a state of boredom for so long. I am a person who gives every film a chance even till the end. This time nothing happened. It is really slow. The plot could have been interesting but very poorly executed. Although some of the performances were ok, you could tell they were embarrassed to be part of such a poor project. Please believe me when I say do not watch this ever even if you were to be paid. Having said this, you could watch it just to experience an intense state of boredom like I did, but don't say I didn't warn you.

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19 out of 23 people found the following review helpful:

to quote from the movie: 'enough horse sh*t'

A Customer from cardiff, wales, 6th February, 2007

Film fans, noir fans, James Ellroy fans, beware: watching this adaptation of The Black Dahlia is like watching one of those soft-porn movies which pretends to be plot-based, only without the porn. Why pull my punches? It’s like watching cigarette butts get stubbed on your mother’s breast, only without the laughs. It’s not that it’s a drab picture – which it is – but that it’s such a crying shame. The makers have somehow managed to take a great story, combine it with a great style of filmmaking, and create complete hogwash. In their attempts to tick boxes they’ve taken their eye off of the ball. The film relies too much on stylistic nuances and the result is contrived. If done well, the nods to film noir could’ve added a wonderfully textural layer, and successfully reflected both Ellroy’s writing style and the time period in which the action takes place. But a room full of trilbies and a solitary horn blowing in the background do not a film noir make, and so the result is a painful comic-strip pastiche, when it should’ve been an homage. Far too much tell and not enough show is only one of its flaws. Casting took a serious wrong turn when they chose looks over character, the acting lacks subtlety and depth, the incidental music is invasive, and it’s directed as if De Palma was ridding himself of contractual obligation or looking for revenge on the studio, or us. The Black Dahlia remains a classic waiting to be made. So, having committed this insult to film, will someone in Hollywood please have the decency to do the story justice? Of course not. In the great tradition of film noir, there is no justice. Only pain.

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worse De Palma film ever made....

ROTGUT from , 10th February, 2010

Script....script...script.... the script and plotting of this blessed movie is all over the place. I defy anyone to watch this thing and truly understand what the hell is supposed to be going on! God knows what the book is like!!!

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Thel Black Dahlia

Keeley Andrews from Wickrord, Essex, 1st February, 2010

This film was really disappointing!! I found it confusing and difficult to understand. I had no empathy with any of the characters and by the end of it I really didn't care........... avoid at all costs....

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Too much crammed in but nice to look at

A Customer from Newport, 15th January, 2010

The noir feel and sets reminded me of a comic book caper but not in the veign of 'Spiderman' or 'The Dark Knight', more like 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' but not as engaging. Not all in all a bad thing but too much was crammed into 2hrs and this meant it was not easy to keep up wiith the plot. 'Bucky' didn't seem to have bucked teeth before the fight either.

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A lost chance

A Customer from Purley, Surrey, 5th January, 2010

This film could have been so much better. Unfortunately, the dialogue is so difficult to understand I nearly gave up after 10 minutes: the actors barely talk above a whisper, their diction so appalling that I missed several crucial facets of the story. It all just about made sense in the end but was pretty excrutiating. The lead actor mutters the whole way through and is a complete failure, Johannson is little better at times delivering some important lines at zero audibility. I don't normally give 'one star' but this has been one of my most disappointing picks to date, the more so as the story is fundamentally a good one. It was a lost chance to make a good film.

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