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The Black Dahlia (2006)
Brian De Palma
Impression published on Sunday, 2010-06-20 | Film | 3 stars
I should mention (in the interest of full disclosure and before the fact) that I gave this film an additional star gratis on account of the fact that Rose McGowan has a (pretty effin' sweet) bit part.
Rose McGowan to one side, this movie's got a great setup, fancy sets and a pretty exceptional cast and is therefore very easy to watch. Aaron Eckhart (the totally bogus dude from In the Company of Men) and teen heartthrob Josh Hartnett (whose inclusion doesn't offend me as much as it offends some people) play two hard-boiled LA cops trying to pin a killer on a wickedly mutilated corpse. Attempting to distract, destroy or otherwise disable them are Scarlett Johansson, a dolled-up Hilary Swank and a bright-eyed Mia Kirschner: Johansson does a sort of wide-eyed Betty Draper/Breathless Mahoney kind of thing, Hilary Swank manages to look impressively female and Kirschner, powdered cornstarch white and buckled into gothic Lolita drag, turns in half a dozen old-timey couch test monologues wherein she rehearses a doe-eyed vamp, a little-girl-big-city pout and a "who me?" cheesecake routine that has her picking nervously at the runs in her stockings in anticipation of a super-sexy snuff film finish.
So yeah, easy on the eyes, and a real easy movie to watch.
But, ultimately, it's a lot of costumed frippery and Glamour Shots foreplay for about 15 seconds of sex. The murder mystery that forms the main storyline is totally blah and seems, when the final body drops, totally inconsequential to the world of the film. The police intrigues that constitute the supporting storylines are a little too predictable to do much more than add the littlest bit of flavor to an otherwise bland mix of tired characters and predictable plots.
That having been said, the production values of this movie are pretty darn high and there are a few legitimately great pieces of dialog: Hartnett delivers most of them in his signature choke-whisper, but the way-over-qualified supporting cast gets fair play.
A good (murder) mystery wants you to watch it again and again because a.) the characters are revealed in stages that demand re-consideration and b.) the mystery itself wants you to unravel it again in light of what will, after you've been through it once, be its inevitable conclusion. The Black Dahlia doesn't do the layered onion thing with its characters and its mystery doesn't demand to be re-unraveled in light of its conclusion.
Bottom line, watch it if it's on, but don't go out of your way.
