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Why I Like LA Confidential Better Than Heat and The Departed

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
16 replies | jump to latest

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Heat and The Departed, and The Departed is my favorite film of 2006 and Heat is my second favorite movie of 1995(behind Casino, also starring Robert DeNiro.)

And I realize that there is no NEED to rank movies against and above each other but -- I do. Doesn't everybody?

I group these three movies together because:

Major directors(though Heat and especially The Departed have more famous ones than LAC.)
Cop stories(two set in Los Angeles, one set in Boston)
Crook stories (though only Heat and The Departed FOCUS on the crooks, and cast them with major stars)
Sprawling multi-character stories with ensemble casts.
Oscar took notice(though only The Departed won Best Picture.)

LAC has a disadvantage against the other two: no really big stars in it. Heat had Pacino and DeNiro for the first time together(though only sharing two scenes -- one with dialogue and one with showdown gun action). The Departed had Nicholson for the first time in a Scorsese picture...with hot young stars Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio(bigger) billed higher (and Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin in support.)

To maintain the ensemble of LAC, THAT movie's biggest star was Kevin Spacey -- recently Oscared but in the Supporting category(The Usual Suspects.) Australians Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce in the other two cop leads were semi-unknown Australians. The biggest names in the movie were support: Kim Basinger(Batman) and Danny DeVito(Batman Returns.)

I will note that The Departed "borrowed" something from LAC: the outta nowhere sudden death of a major star. But somehow by the time The Departed did it, it had already been done in LAC and was less surprising(not to mention, buried in a bunch of OTHER killings at the end.)

Anyway, those are the general connections of the three movies, but I still like LAC better, and here's why, in no particular order:

ONE: LAC is a period piece. Heat and The Departed are modern day(after some flashbacks in the latter.) LAC has to recreate Los Angeles circa 1953 -- the music, the clothes, the cars, the "borrowed" architecture(old buildings dressed to look new) and that adds some history and gravitas to the story. "We are transported to another time."

TWO: James Ellroy. The scripts for Heat and The Departed are great, but Ellroy's voice was unique, "one of a kind," and to date, this is the only movie that even came close to capturing the author's hard-boiled weirdo patter. (DePalma's "The Black Dahlia" failed as much as LAC succeeded at that.) Try this exchange between crooked cop Spacey and slimy gossip columnist DeVito:

(A young actress has walked away angrily from DeVito)

DeVito: We did a piece last year. "Ingenue dykes in Hollywood." Her name got mentioned.
Spacey: Is it true?
DeVito: "Just the facts, m'am." (Changing subject) Look , Jackie Boy. A friend of mine just sold some reefer to Matt Reynolds. He's tripping the light fantastic with Tammy Jordan at 2245 Maravilla, just up from the El Cortez.
Spacey: You lost me, Sid. Who?
DeVito: Contract players at Metro. You pinch 'em. I do you up feature in the next issue. Plus the usual fifty cash.
Spacey: I need an extra fifty. Two patrolmen at twenty apiece and a dime for the watch commander at Hollywood station.
DeVito: Jack! Its Christmas!
Spacey: No, its felony possession of marijuana.
DeVito: Actually, its circulation thirty-six thousand and climbing...no telling where this is gonna go, Jackie Boy. Radio, television. You whet the people's appetite for the truth and the sky's the limit.

END

Great writing. Forties rat-a-tat fast and noirish. Slang both real and made up. A take on police corruption. But most of all -- the move towards gossip as something in 1953 that would be big in 1997(when LAC came out)...and huge today in 2023. (See later below.)

I also like DeVito talking of a character this way: "(He's) on the night train to the Big Adios." (i.e. murdered.)

Its not just DeVito. Here's police detective captain James Cromwell talking to tough Russell Crowe about joining his "mobster beat-up team":

Cromwell: Your talents lie elsewhere, Wendell. (Everybody else calls him "Bud.") Its a muscle job. You'll do what I say and not ask questions. Do you follow my drift?
Crowe: In Technicolor.

And on and on an on. Not just a great script but a unique voice. Won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, and that's a competitive field.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

THREE: Multi-Levels of Race and Entertainment Culture, Overlapping.

LA Confidential did something which is pretty daring, overall. It set is basic "period mystery plot"(reminiscent indeed of Chinatown, which was set in the 30s) against a backdrop of extremely complex racial AND cultural levels, circa Los Angeles 1953.

The racial:

Anglo-Americans
African-Americans
Mexican-Americans

Entertainment culture:

Radio(fading out in 1953 but mentioned)
TV (rising high in 1953 as exemplified by "Badge of Honor" -- Dragnet under another name)
Movies(the top of the entertainment pyramid for wealth and stardom in1953 -- but under siege from TV)

and LAC adds two other levels:

Prostitution(in glamourous Hollywood, with high class hookers serving city leaders and cut to look like famous stars)

The gossip industry(this is the BIG one, and really the element in LAC that sets it aside from the "pure cop/crime drama" of Heat and The Departed.)

Note: LAC took risks in 1997 with some of the racial elements -- the idea that ALL races in LA were in conflict, the white-Mexican jail riot on Christmas; the sequence in which African-Americans hold a Mexican-American woman prisoner to rape her (thereby inciting anti-woman beater Bud White into murderous action) -- one doubts that this tough a movie on these topics would be made today, but it makes the movie more provocative and important -- even as the mob murders are the "A" plot.

In certain ways, LAC reminds us that in 1953 Los Angeles, the racial worlds were kept separate from the "all-white" entertainment world(with all white movie stars, TV stars and radio stars -- less Amos n' Andy and few other ethnic acts), and yet, one world DID superimpose over the other, they couldn't stay separate for long.

BTW, Heat does have some important African-American characters and does incorporate their lives into the story...but LAC has a historical emphasis that raises touchier questions about our past.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

FOUR: Gossip as an industry and a way of life that has only gotten bigger today.

I've mentioned it before, but the gossip industry angle of LA Confidential now strikes me as the most powerful universal angle of the whole movie -- Heat and The Departed may compete perfectly well as well-plotted cop pictures(with The Departed having the heavy gimmick of "duelling moles in the mob and on the force")...but only LAC has something to say about how p powerful gossip would become in regards to EVERYTHING today.

Simply open your internet pages and behold: gossip about movie stars, TV stars...reality stars..."influencers"..YouTube stars (And the gossip can get quite mean: as I post this, there have been photos surfacing of thin 90s hottie Bridget Fonda now quite overweight -- her weight IS the story.)

Gossip about politicians...cable news and the internet have transformed our politics into a giant reality show or, more often "continuing dramas"(primary elections are season finales, general elections are series finales.)

And the gossipy silliness of "the internet is outraged" over this and that. (Click bait -- just hired help attacking people on twitter, etc.)

Its quite horrific, really. But unavoidable, really. And LA Confidential saw that it began in 1953 with "forbidden rags" like DeVitos(was it CALLED LA Confidential?)..."off the record, on the QT, and very hush, hush."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

FIVE: Two BIG narrative surprises. SPOILERS

(I"ve tried to keep this post spoiler free to allow reading it, but here be spoilers for LAC only.)

I still remember watching the scene where Kevin Spacey visits James Cromwell late at night at his home to brief him on the case ("You're lucky my wife and four fair daughters are at the house in Santa Barbara," says cop Cromwell, planting a plot seed and revealing his ill-gained wealth in one line). I drifted a bit, didn't quite concentrate and then -- BOOM -- Cromwell shot Spacey and the whole theater gasped and then we watched in sadness as the now-noble Spacey died so elegantly AND as he planted the name that would solve everything: Rollo Tomasi. The Departed has a pretty good surprise death , too, but not with this sense of elegance.

But there is ANOTHER surprise in LAC -- a bit more controversial, and in some ways, a bit more surprising.

For it is one thing when characters suddenly die...its another when they suddenly LIVE.

We'd figured that Bud White had sacrificed his life for arch-rival Ed Exley in the great final shootout with the bad guys. We'd seen Evil James Cromwell shoot him a few times -- once just after Crowe had stabbed Cromwell in the leg.

But now, at the end, a great surging burst of Jerry Goldsmith music reveals Bud White to be ALIVE -- in the car of the now-ex-hooker who will take him home with her to Bixbee Arizona. Its the happy ending that Chinatown didn't have, and it feels great.

How could Bud White survive those shots? Easy enough to explain: unlike as with Spacey, Cromwell had to shoot Crowe in a panic, in near darkness, and in pain(knife to the leg.) Bullets missed vital organs and the "head shot" went through Crowe's cheeks -- missed the brain. He may not even end up paralyzed. A great surprise for the end of the movie -- and a final bonding with Pearce.

There's more reasons I love LAC..but that's good enough for now.

[–] letess (1036) a year ago

What about LA Confidential and Titanic? That’s the conversation.

The Departed borrowed, no copied everything from Infernal Affairs. The Chinese movie was so much better.

I LOVE Heat too btw. One of the greatest heist films. But LA Confidential is one the best films ever.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

What about LA Confidential and Titanic? That’s the conversation.

---

Well, that's the conversation of 1997. It just seemed inevitable that year. Titanic was the biggest grossing movie of all time and still going strong once the Oscars came around in early 1998. It had been super-expensive to make.

The bottom line on Titanic was that the second half(the sinking of the ship) WAS one of the great movie sequences of all time, and that rather "countered" the less-interesting first half. That the love story ended in such tragedy made Titanic "the disaster movie that turned into a chick-flick tearjerker." It seems the academy HAD to give the Best Picture Oscar to Titanic.

To my mind, had LAC Confidential come out in 1996...it would have beaten The English Patient. In 1995, it would have beaten Braveheart. But it wouldn't have beaten Schindler's List or the megahit Forrest Gump. So running into Titanic was just as risky as those years in the 90s. Kevin Spacey and American Beauty won big in 1999...but LAC is better than American Beauty and Spacey was better(and unnominated) in LAC. Its a crap shoot.

I bound together LAC, Heat, and The Departed because I see them as a "matched set" of ensemble cop/crooks movies.

---

The Departed borrowed, no copied everything from Infernal Affairs.

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So I hear.

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The Chinese movie was so much better.

--

But The Departed had a big name American movie star cast(in honor of director Scorsese) and a really fun role for Mark Wahlberg(who got the only Oscar nomination of the cast.)

I LOVE Heat too btw. One of the greatest heist films. But LA Confidential is one the best films ever.

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I LOVE Heat too btw. One of the greatest heist films.

--

Agreed, with one of the best gun battles put on screen -- the SOUND of which is as exciting as the visuals.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

But LA Confidential is one the best films ever.

--

Well, I just think LAC has a lot more going on...it pulls in American history(Los Angeles), the entertainment industry, the gossip industry, racial issues...just a helluva reach of subjects.

One problem I had with Heat was its decision to keep Pacino and DeNiro apart except for their one sit-down in the middle(copied almost exactly from a TV movie with unknownish actors, also done by Michael Mann) and then forcing them into a climax (heavily borrowed from Steve McQueen's Bullitt) in which, finally, one of them had to die and it seemed rather predictable as to which one it had to be. Heat also meandered quite a bit over its long running time, I felt.

[–] letess (1036) a year ago

[–] ccr1633 (1436) a year ago

hello

Well, I just think LAC has a lot more going on...it pulls in American history(Los Angeles), the entertainment industry, the gossip industry, racial issues...just a helluva reach of subjects.

I also think LA Confidential outclasses Heat for the reasons you mention. One thing that hasn't been mentioned are the love interests. I found the budding romance in LAC between Bud White and Lynn Bracken pretty compelling, two people with serious confidence issues who complemented one another beautifully. In Heat, by contrast, I didn't buy the relationship between McCauley (DeNiro) and Eady even plausible (much less compelling), particularly that she elected to dash off to another country with him after she learned of his profession and willingness to murder people for money. The stormy relationship between Chris (Kilmer) and Charlene was serviceable character filler, I suppose, but mainly a distraction from the cops and robbers dance that far and away was the strength of the film. As you suggest, I think Heat would've benefitted from lopping off a good 30 minutes or so. In my ideal version, most of the relationship drama would've been sliced. I understood what Mann was trying to do with that angle, but I don't think he did it well. It's never been his forte.

[–] letess (1036) a year ago

You’re correct. The sinking of the Titanic was unbelievable. The love story and the script were not so good. But LA Confidential was excellent. I would have voted it best movie for that year.

[–] ATG6 (3000) a year ago

LA Confidential was better than Titanic and better than Forrest Gump. And pretty much everything is better than The English Patient.

[–] ATG6 (3000) a year ago

Because LA Confidential is a much better movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Did you read that James Ellroy didn’t like Crowe and Basinger and essentially Curt Hanson and waited until now to say something.

Ellroy said. “I think it’s turkey of the highest form. I think Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger are impotent. The director died, so now I can disparage the movie.”

--

Hmmm...and Ellroy said such GOOD things about the movie when it came out. (Paid to talk? Paid NOT to complain?)

Novel writers often don't like the movies made from the books they SELL for money.

Two examples:

ONE: Stephen King famously hated Kubrick's version of The Shining and Jack Nicholson's casting and performance in it. King backed a "more faithful" TV adaptation with Steven Weber in the Nicholson part. Nobody remembers it, but the Kubrick/Nicholson(admittedly, the flawed film of a genius) , lives on.

TWO: Arthur LaBern, the author of the book from which Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy(1972) was made , wrote a letter to the freakin' LONDON TIMES for publication in which he said (generalized) that Hitchcock and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer(hot from Sleuth, but evidently not very good in Labern's eyes) had dumbed down his book, inserted "archaic" old British phrases evidently out of Hitchcock's youth, and had made Scotland Yard look like idiots.

Old Warrior Hitchcock didn't take this lying down. He told the press "Well, this author had a scene in the book where they found an incriminating fingerprint on a potato...stuffed into a dead woman's vagina. I wasn't about to film THAT." I've read Labern's book and in the key "rape murder of a woman in her office at lunch" scene, the psycho killer's lines are much more crude and blunt than in the movie, though Hitchcock used a few of the lines from the scene in the book -- the ones that worked. The movie is better than the book.

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And yet the turkey was the movie Black Dahlia with De Palma directing.

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It was very sad. De Palma neither took the time nor hired the actors to "make it happen" on Black Dahlia as it had on LAC.

[–] StoneKeeper (21817) a year ago

[deleted]

[–] StoneKeeper (21817) a year ago

Let me just pit it that way:

LA confidential: 9/10
Heat: 8/10
The departed: 7/10

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

hello

--

hello!

--
Well, I just think LAC has a lot more going on...it pulls in American history(Los Angeles), the entertainment industry, the gossip industry, racial issues...just a helluva reach of subjects.

---

I also think LA Confidential outclasses Heat for the reasons you mention. One thing that hasn't been mentioned are the love interests.

---

Very true.

---

I found the budding romance in LAC between Bud White and Lynn Bracken pretty compelling, two people with serious confidence issues who complemented one another beautifully.

---

Yes..the idea that Bud White elects to try to DATE a hooker outside her work AS a hooker -- and that Lynn accepts the invitation -- tells us that they recogniize kindred souls from the get-go. The more Lynn learns about Bud, the more she loves him.

---

In Heat, by contrast, I didn't buy the relationship between McCauley (DeNiro) and Eady even plausible (much less compelling), particularly that she elected to dash off to another country with him after she learned of his profession and willingness to murder people for money.

---

Yeah, that was pushed on us pretty hard -- more "on paper" than in reality. And Robert DeNiro plays the sociopath criminal better than the warm lover.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The stormy relationship between Chris (Kilmer) and Charlene was serviceable character filler, I suppose, but mainly a distraction from the cops and robbers dance that far and away was the strength of the film.

---

Yes. Meanwhile you had Al Pacino in his newest failed marriage complete with damaged stepdaughter(young Natalie Portman) and suicide attempt. Heat tried to pile a lot of plot and characters into a small space -- it was as if there HAD to be a romantic relationship for DeNiro and there HAD to be a romantic relationship for Pacino -- star service -- and it got in the way of the story. Let alone making room for Kilmer and the beautiful Ashley Judd.

--

As you suggest, I think Heat would've benefitted from lopping off a good 30 minutes or so. In my ideal version, most of the relationship drama would've been sliced. I understood what Mann was trying to do with that angle, but I don't think he did it well. It's never been his forte.

---

Forced. Meanwhile my self-selected third movie for comparison here -- The Departed -- had to put Vera Farmiga in relationships with BOTH Leo and Matt and that seemed a bit forced, too.

No, there was something about Bud and Lynn -- Russell and Kim -- that was touching and worth both fighting for.

Irony: almost 20 years later, Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger re-united in the fun buddy crime movie "The Nice Guys" and though it was nice to see them in the same scenes together(a little) ,time and plastic surgery and weight had changed the balance of things. Fun movie, though.

[–] ShadowHunter (814) 6 months ago

its just a better story and script. i cant say it has better actors per say, but it has better acting. with far far more unique characters.

dineros and pacinos characters mirror eachother, just on different sides. and all the heist members have lots of similaritiy. Where as L.As characters all seem completely different and are well developed