Adapted from the novel L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Three cops in 1950s Los Angeles - brainy, ambitious Ed Exley; brawny, vengeful Bud White; and flashy, glory-driven Jack Vincennes - each separately become entangled in a web of seemingly unrelated crimes. Despite their differences and rivalries, these three must work together to figure out exactly what's happening and how to stop it.
This must have been a very tricky adaptation to pull off. The novel is so long and its plot is so complex that any movie encompassing the entirety of it would have to be about eight hours long. Obviously, some of the story had to be omitted. However, everything is so carefully woven together in the novel that if anything was simply removed, the story would no longer make sense. Each elimination required modification in the remaining scenes to accommodate it. Since I had never seen this movie before, at first I kept yelling at the screen things like, "Wait, what?! That's not who was supposed to die then! What happened to this other character?" But after a while, I figured out what they were doing, and I kind of got on board with it. The novel does have an awful lot of characters, and I'm still not sure I fully understand exactly how all of them tied into what was going on, and I kept getting people mixed up. The movie has way fewer characters, so some of the people who stayed had to take on additional roles. For example, in the novel, some random ex-cop was murdered in the Nite Owl Massacre, which was changed to Bud's former partner in the movie. Both versions include a Nite Owl victim having murdered someone else soon before being murdered himself, but in the book this is someone who was not a cop, whereas in the movie it's once again Bud's former partner. By modifying the story in this way, the movie is like the book in that everything is tied together, but the movie's web is much smaller and tighter than the novel's.
While for the most part, the film is consistent with, though not quite the same as, the book, there were a few changes that significantly altered things in a way that bothered me. The thing that I'm most annoyed about is what the movie did to Inez Soto. In the book, Inez Soto is super important. She has affairs with both Ed and Bud, she rebuilds her life despite suffering major trauma, and is one of the few characters you can actually consistently root for. In the movie, she's in two scenes and has like three lines. I don't even remember if they ever say her name; she's mostly just referred to as "the rape victim". Now, to be fair, since the movie killed off Ed's dad, and much of Inez's story is tied to Ed's dad's story in the book, a lot of what she does became unnecessary and irrelevant. I just couldn't help noticing that the woman of color's role was drastically reduced, while Lynn, the Veronica Lake look-alike, got to do almost everything on screen that she did on the page. Typical Hollywood.
There were definitely aspects of both the book and the movie that I strongly disliked, but for the most part I found them interesting to read and watch. Despite being set over 60 years ago, the story is still disgustingly relevant. Much of it centers around policy brutality, particularly directed toward people of color, which is obviously still a major problem, and instead of trying to fix it, the powers that be insist on pretending they think the issue is about the national anthem. Then there's the character of the actor who, at least in the book, molests teenage boys, and everyone kind of knows about it but keeps it quiet. This isn't in the movie, but a certain actor who was recently exposed for doing that is, and I'm still cringing.
Next up: Gods and Monsters, based on the novel by Christopher Bram
No comments:
Post a Comment