L.A. Confidential: Critic Reviews

This movie restores genre elements to a level of potency that's disturbing, satisfying, and rare as hell.

A parlor game has already begun as to whether the supreme acting revelation in L.A. Confidential is provided by Mr. Crowe, Mr. Spacey or Mr. Pearce.

An irresistible treat with enough narrative twists and memorable characters for a half-dozen films.

A rattling good police story and a dark, laughing tone poem to the never-innocent city of illusions.

It's the story of good white actors stranded, in the name of noir, in a movie that refuses to kick into gear until it's far too late.

Stop reading. Put this review on hold until after you've seen L.A. Confidential.

Against all odds, L.A. Confidential succeeds brilliantly, right down to Jerry Goldsmith's score, which evokes his haunting theme from Chinatown without being haunted by it.

Its intricate plot is so nihilistic and cold around the heart, its nominal heroes so amoral, so willing to sell out anyone and everyone, that the film is as initially unnerving as it is finally irresistible.

Writer-director Curtis Hanson's adaptation of the James Ellroy novel wasn't merely one of the two or three greatest movies of the 1990s; it stands as a masterpiece for the ages.

Everything Angelinos love and hate about their city is here, as well as anything a movie fan could possibly wish for.

A modern cinematic classic...the alchemical reaction of a director and a charmed collaboration of actors, writers, and design artists...[Blu-ray]

...one of the most absorbing, compelling, most thoroughly enjoyable crime thrillers to have come along in the past decade.

A neo-noir masterpiece in the league of "Double Indemnity"...

You have to pay close attention to follow the double-crossing intricacies of the plot, but the reward for your work is dark and dirty fun.

Spacey's Vincennes is the standout in a just about flawless ensemble, and director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

Taut, atmospheric, acted with confident ease -- this is one of the greatest American movies of the 1990s.

Dizzying and powerful.

Representing the best of Classic Hollywood Cinema, this noir policier is marked by densely-plotted narrative, psychological depth, moral ambiguity, emotional complxity.

As the emotional nexus, a Veronica Lake lookalike trapped in a web of male desires, Basinger is arguably the pick of a perfect cast. Subtle, shocking, compelling and immensely assured.

You could call it a huge epic, but it's also a scrappy movie, full of energy as well as style.

I dug it big-time, baby!

In doing away with manners, Hanson's hardboiled detective stories craft a more hard-hitting picture of the time than any filmmaker who worked in the 1950s could have dreamed

There is a gritty, hard-boiled feel to 'L.A. Confidential' that is so audience satisfying.

With every corner turned, the viewer feels that sinking feeling sink even deeper: everything's poisoned, everything's suspicious, everything's going down.

This police corruption thriller, based on a James Ellroy novel, drags in places and ultimately fails in its film noir genre, but it's tops in art direction and photography.