Read all Reviews by Erik McClanahan

The Black Dahlia

Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by Josh Friedman adapted from the James Ellroy novel
Rated R: for strong violence, some grisly images, language and

In the 1970’s, American cinema was to be changed forever. It was a decade that spawned the promising careers of so many fantastic directors the likes of which hasn’t been matched since (although the film auteur movement is experiencing a bit of a renaissance these days in the works of Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Alexander Payne and many others). Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and many others made fantastic films their way and rarely compromised their visions. Many of them have remained fresh to this day, still making films of importance (except for Coppola, who has apparently passed the torch to his daughter Sofia) by reinventing themselves for new generations while never compromising their artistic integrity. I highly recommend any film fan to check out the late Ted Demme’s fantastic documentary A Decade Under the Influence for an enthralling look in to American cinema’s most creative decade. But I digress.

Brian De Palma came to mild prominence in the seventies when his adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Carrie and the Hitchcock-inspired Obsession were released in 1976. Some saw the man as a visual artist with a predilection for violent stories drenched in sexual pervasiveness and dominating male characters. Ever the Hitchcock aficionado, De Palma often referenced the master of suspense in his films with long takes, sweeping camera moves, wrongly-accused protagonists and plots involving murder, intrigue and the like. De Palma’s career really took off, though, in the beginning of the 1980’s, when he directed a string of critical and commercial hits: Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (‘81), Scarface (’83), Body Double (’84), and The Untouchables (’87). Both Untouchables and Scarface were terrific gangster film achievements, but might have been the result of great scripts from great screenwriters (David Mamet and Oliver Stone respectively) rather than De Palma’s direction.

De Palma’s most impressive film, for which I believe he had the most impact on its quality, was Carlito’s Way. He followed it with the first film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. With its suspenseful, well-crafted action set pieces and complex storyline, Mission: Impossible was one of the better releases in the summer of 1996. It seemed that De Palma was beginning to reinvent himself for a new film generation. Alas, he followed with three embarrassingly bad films (Snake Eyes—where even a bravura 20-minute uncut opening take couldn’t save it from mediocrity; Mission to Mars—a dreadful attempt at making a Kubrickean-style space adventure that knowingly ripped off from 2001: A Space Odyssey to no end; Femme Fatale—in which we have to sit through two hours of ridiculous sexual provocation and poor acting from Rebecca Romijn and Antonio Banderas)and hampered any chance of becoming an important director again.            De Palma takes another step backward in his cinematic career with the Black Dahlia, a film so laughably bad that it can only be enjoyed on a campy, its-so-bad-its-fun-to-watch level. The film is based off the James Ellroy novel of the same name, which is a fictionalized account of the grisly 1940’s murder of Elizabeth Short and two detectives working on the case. Ellroy, whose L.A. Confidential was adapted into a far superior movie in every way imaginable by director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Brian Helgeland. The Black Dahlia fails on so many levels that I am going to keep it short by providing the top five reasons that it stinks:

--The film isn’t even about the Black Dahlia murder case!

Screenwriter Josh Friedman (who also co-wrote last summer’s War of the Worlds) shows a real lack of focus here in that no more than 20 minutes of screen time are dedicated to the actual murder case. The film goes from one ridiculous subplot to the next—the main character’s father, prostitution, lesbian sex, porn, a boxing match, and the most ham-handed love triangle in recent memory. The movie is more about cigarette smoking than it is about the Black Dahlia case.

--Every role is miscast, and every performance feels fake.

You know something is wrong when two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is bad. I can see why Swank wanted this role, as it is different from anything she’s done, but she doesn’t play a sex-crazed prostitute very well. At all. As for the rest of the cast, Swank makes them look like afternoon soap opera actors. Josh Hartnett keeps trying to play these ultra-cool tough guy parts, but it is hard to believe him as a hard-boiled detective from the 1940’s. He just stands there and looks confused the entire movie. Aaron Eckhart is usually good, but here he goes in to overacting mode too often and eventually descends into camp. Scarlett Johansson is the most inconsistent, but stunningly beautiful, actress working today. For every subtly brilliant, seductive performance (Match Point, Lost In Translation), she has a performance that shows how limited her talents are like the one she gives in Dahlia. Now for the worst performance of the year. Get your Razzie speech ready Fiona Shaw (from the Harry Potter films) because you were so freaking bad in this movie that the entire audience laughed at you every time your character appeared.

--De Palma chooses style over substance.

Dahlia looks great (thanks to cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond beautiful camera work) but the style takes away from the story because it is so distracting. Maybe De Palma new he had a weak plot so he tried to make every camera angle fancy and every dolly, crane and steady cam shot elaborate. One scene in particular stands out: when Hartnett’s character Bucky is introduced to Swank’s bizarre rich family, we see everything from Bucky’s eyes via a POV shot with a steadicam. This is a technique that De Palma has used before to great effect (the scene in Untouchables where Sean Connery is murdered for instance), but here it feels forced and utterly pointless.

--The music is god-awful!

Not much else needed to say here except that Mark Isham’s dreadful score plays throughout every scene much like a traditional golden age Hollywood picture, but it is so hard to listen to that it will make your ears bleed.

--Black Dahlia wants to be a dark, stylish Hollywood film noir, but so many other films have done this better.

Dahlia attempts to be another neo-noir set in seedy golden age Hollywood ala Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, but it is so downright awful that the only purpose it serves is to show just how great those two films are. Save yourself from wasting two hours and watch those classics instead. Once I left the theater, I immediately watched The Third Man and felt a calm come over me because I was watching a classic noir that didn’t insult my intelligence.  

HDFEST grading scale
-The Black Dahlia-

Story                        C-

Acting                        D-

Visuals                        B+

Originality            C 

Enjoyability            B-

Overall Grade            D+