The Black Dahlia: Critic Reviews

It's an old-fashioned noir made in the gallows-smirk spirit of L.A. Confidential.

Brian De Palma drains the life out of James Ellroy's take on the spectacularly cruel 1947 murder of a young Los Angeles woman known as the Black Dahlia.

What it accomplishes with its stunning cinematography and set design is undercut by a lack of coherence.

Despite genius-level contributions from cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and art director Dante Ferretti, the handsome film is almost abusively murky, trafficking in difficult-to-follow plot manipulations, arbitrary twists and mumbled dialogue.

Since The Black Dahlia more or less tells the story of an actress, a heinously murdered one at that, it makes sense that the first thing you notice about this so-so adaptation of James Ellroy's novel is the shoddy acting.

There are moments when The Black Dahlia projects a spectral world, but its ghosts in broad daylight are elusive at best.

The convoluted plot would be exhausting even if it were believable. It isn't.

In The Black Dahlia, narrative strands tangle and wither, and minor characters clutter the plot.

Dahlia seethes with atmosphere, and Hollywood's underbelly is always worth an ogle.

Such a heinous crime would seem ideal for the man who gave us Scarface, but Mr. De Palma uses the murder as a springboard for pretentious social commentary and garish exercises in camp.

The zoot suits and fedoras look great, but without a script or hard-eyed private detective in sight, it's merely a production designer's exercise.

The Black Dahlia is an essay in incoherence. The confusion wouldn't matter if there were any feeling onscreen, but the blood and innards seem missing from the movie, too.

The picture is a kind of fattened goose that's been stuffed with goose-liver pate. It's overrich and fundamentally unsatisfying.

Such a shame that The Black Dahlia collapses into a gruesome pile of steaming camp in the last half hour.

The Black Dahlia, set in the 1940s, exists to make L.A. Confidential look like God's gift to noir by comparison.

Director Brian De Palma will probably take the rap for this tepid noir, but the real culprits are Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, red-hot lovers in life but (as ever) gorgeous stiffs on-screen.

Josh Friedman's screenplay doesn't so much distill the flavor of James Ellroy's hard-boiled writing as serve up indigestible chunks of verbiage.

Brian De Palma's film honors Ellroy's grim prose but can't accommodate his byzantine plot. What seems rich and intricate on the page is tangled and impenetrable onscreen.

If you like any of the lead actors, don't go see this movie. If you like good movies, don't go see this movie. If you're a steady customer at Helga's House of Pain, this one's for you.

The best you can say about The Black Dahlia: For people who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they will like.

Mr. De Palma and his collaborators have been unable to translate Mr. Ellroy's depth of feeling into cinematic equivalents.

A literally ripping good yarn is undercut by some lackluster performances and late-inning overripe melodrama.

Visually dazzling but ultimately disappointing.

The Black Dahlia is a NASCAR race all but ended by a spectacular wreck on the next-to-last lap.