Mystery, Death & Corruption - LA Confidential Reaction

L.A. Confidential (1990) is a neo-noir novel by James Ellroy and the third of his L.A. Quartet series. It is dedicated to Mary Doherty Ellroy. The epigraph is "A glory that costs everything and means nothing"-Steve Erickson.
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD 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 Hush-Hush.
At the time, actors Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe were relatively unknown in North America. One of the film's backers, Peter Dennett, was worried about the lack of established stars in the lead roles, but supported Hanson's casting decisions, and the director had the confidence also to recruit Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, and Danny DeVito.
L.A. Confidential was a critical and commercial success. It grossed $126 million against a $35 million budget and received critical acclaim for the acting, writing, directing, editing, and Jerry Goldsmith's musical score. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning two: Best Supporting Actress (Basinger) and Best Adapted Screenplay; Titanic won in every other category L.A. Confidential was nominated for. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected L.A. Confidential for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Cast
Kevin Spacey as Detective Sergeant Jack "Hollywood Jack" Vincennes
Russell Crowe as Officer Wendell "Bud" White
Guy Pearce as Detective Lieutenant Edmund "Shotgun Ed" Exley
James Cromwell as Captain Dudley Smith
Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken
Danny DeVito as Sid Hudgens
David Strathairn as Pierce Morehouse Patchett
Ron Rifkin as District Attorney Ellis Loew
Graham Beckel as Detective Sergeant Richard "Dick Stens" Stensland
Amber Smith as Susan Lefferts
John Mahon as Police Chief
Paul Guilfoyle as Meyer "Mickey" Cohen
Matt McCoy as Brett Chase
Paolo Seganti as Johnny Stompanato
Simon Baker Denny as Matt Reynolds
Tomas Arana as Detective Sergeant Michael Breuning
Michael McCleery as Detective Sergeant William Carlisle
Shawnee Free Jones as Tammy Jordan
Darrell Sandeen as Leland "Buzz" Meeks
Marisol Padilla Sánchez as Inez Soto
Gwenda Deacon as Mrs. Lefferts
Jim Metzler as Councilman
Brenda Bakke as Lana Turner
Reception
The film was screened at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. According to Hanson, Warner did not want it shown at Cannes because they felt there was an "anti-studio bias ... So why go and come home a loser?" But Hanson wanted to debut the film at a high-profile international venue. He and other producers bypassed the studio and sent a print directly to the festival's selection committee, which loved it. Ellroy saw the film and said, "I understood in 40 minutes or so that it is a work of art on its own level. It was amazing to see the physical incarnation of the characters.
Box office
L.A. Confidential grossed $64.6 million in the United States, and $61.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $126.2 million.
The film was released on September 19, 1997, in 769 theaters, grossing $5.2 million in its opening weekend and finishing fourth behind In & Out, The Game and Wishmaster. It made $4.4 million in its second weekend then expanded to 1,625 theaters and grossed $4.7 million in its third.
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, L.A. Confidential holds an approval rating of 99% and an average rating of 9/10, with 162 out of 163 reviews being positive. The site's critical consensus reads: "Taut pacing, brilliantly dense writing and Oscar-worthy acting combine to produce a smart, popcorn-friendly thrill ride." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and described it as "seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted, and one of the best films of the year."[28] He later included it as one of his "Great Movies" and described it as "film noir, and so it is, but it is more: Unusually for a crime film, it deals with the psychology of the characters ... It contains all the elements of police action, but in a sharply clipped, more economical style; the action exists not for itself but to provide an arena for the personalities".
Some authors have described L.A. Confidential as a neo-noir film.