The Black Dahlia
I’m sorry folks, but if you dress a dog like Sherlock Holmes it doesn’t mean it can go out and solve crime. The same applies to The Black Dahlia. Just because it goes through all the motions of a film noir does not make it a film noir. As a matter of fact, there’s a fine line between homage and satire, Brian De Palma stumbles all over it.
It would take a phone book’s worth of pages to explain the plot of this film and even then you still wouldn’t understand it. Basically Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) are best pals and detectives on the force together. They go out to parties accompanied by Blanchard’s girlfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson), who does more for sweaters than Lana Turner ever dreamed possible. Well, these two guys get wrapped up in a murder involving wanna-be starlet Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), her rich look-a-like Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) and the rest of the Linscott clan.
I defy you to sit down and watch The Big Sleep straight through for the first time and completely understand what’s going on in that film, but The Black Dahlia is convoluted in a lazy sort of way. When the truth starts to come out you’ll probably think to yourself “Wait, who’s that guy?” One of the cheapest things a film can do is lead you down one path and then arbitrarily pull someone out of nowhere to blame everything on. It’s just lazy and since the audience has no connection to the character it has no emotional impact.
I think it goes without saying that this is a great cast; it’s just unfortunate that it’s not a great cast for this film. There isn’t one good performance in the whole movie. Now part of it is that they had nothing to work with, but the audience I saw this film with laughed out loud on several occasions. First off, you have Hartnett squinting his way through this whole mess, while Johansson just robotically moves through the scenes spouting what can only be described as single entendres. I really think she’s only in this film for her looks. Swank is just ridiculous. Her character and accent are so over the top it’s just camp. I’m willing to bet there’s a drag show being drawn out right now based on it. I’m still not sure exactly what her accent was supposed to be. However, the topper has to be Fiona Shaw as the drunken matron of the Linscott clan, Ramona. The audience shouldn’t be snickering during the dramatic climax of a film, but Shaw’s drunken silliness was just unbelievably bad. She really channeled her inner Otis from The Andy Griffith Show.
Aside from the bad script that has little to nothing to do with reality and the bad acting, Brian De Palma really sort of phoned this one in. It’s as if he had a film noir check list and just went down it. Not only that but some of camera work is distractingly unnecessary. For example, when Bucky first meets the Linscott family the camera switches to a hand held point of view shot so as he’s introduced to each member the camera wobbles up into their face. What’s the point of that? It’s like something out of a bad romantic comedy. There’s also at least one bizarre transition that looks like something you’d see used by one of those people doing karaoke on cable access.
I do have to give it up for the marketing team on this one. They had me convinced I was going to see some dark, somewhat grizzly murder mystery, but instead I got some goofy joke of a film. The first part comes off as if it just doesn’t take itself as seriously as it should, but the more the story reveals itself we find that there is just nothing to take seriously. I wouldn’t suggest anyone go see this film unless you want a pretty good laugh at the expense of a bunch of talented people or possibly if you want to see Josh Hartnett’s hiney. Personally I’d choose the former.
The Grade
- Story: D
- Acting: D
- Visuals: C-
- Originality: C
- Enjoyability: D
Overall: D
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