Wilting
Dahlia
dies in theater.
Beck once wrote, "Hollywood doesn't know what Hollywood doesn't want," a dubious statement confirmed by Brian De Palma's new adaptation of James Ellroy's novel
The Black Dahlia
. Attempting to re-create a noir film of the 1940s, De Palma hungrily employs every device associated with the heady genre. The result is a garish caricature of
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the great staples of postwar American filmmaking, an overstated, disjointed, impersonal offering floating in a no man's land between
To Have and Have Not
and
Sin City
.
One of the legendary ghost stories of Hollywood is the infamous murder of Elizabeth (Betty) Short, an unsolved atrocity in which a starry-eyed 22-year-old girl from the Midwest was cut in half, disemboweled and slit across her face from ear to ear. The story became symbolic of the very real and unspoken iniquity of Tinseltown, a place where the powerful and influential could be capable of almost anything.
Enter Fire and Ice (Lee Blanchard and Bucky Bleichert, respectively), a crack team of ex-boxer police detectives hard up for justice and a lady in distress, but most of the ladies agree they "ain't never heard of a clean cop." Lee (Aaron Eckhart) falls into a Benzedrine-fueled obsession with the murder and other convoluted personal issues involving his kept lady friend Kay (Scarlett Johansson). Bucky (Josh Hartnett) is left to pound the beat of lesbian bars and the houses of the eccentric rich alone, all the while trying to save Lee and Kay, the only family he has, from imploding.
The mounting layers of intrigue are botched by a score of tastelessly applied '40s filmic devices, including the complete overuse of hard shadows, forced perspective, venetian blinds and cigarette holders. De Palma's filmmaking reeks of uninspired mimicry, forgoing any original style and failing to bring anything new to the language of noir. His prized cinematic moment is his most conspicuous, an elaborate crane shot that climbs above a building lined with ominous black crows, reveals the field where Short's body is concealed and twists 180 degrees to follow a traveling black car. The move is self-involved and stands out so drastically that the audience forgets about the story to wonder at its mechanics.
What the film does deliver, perhaps not always where intended, are laughs. A creeping killer is depicted in shadows reminiscent of a "Spy" cartoon, while a scene between Bucky and Kay includes a turkey flying through the air. The most engaging 10 minutes of the film are
***image2***
at a dinner at the Linscott's. A surprisingly glamorous Hilary Swank plays Madeleine Linscott, the wanton, spoiled daughter of a corrupt real estate mogul who is eccentric enough to have his dog killed and stuffed to preserve the moment he made his first million. The scene could be a short film all its own, replete with a mad-as-a-hatter mother downing martinis and a younger sister who does obscene drawings of their dinner guests.
Swank and Hartnett have a slight, but at least detectable, chemistry, while Johansson, lacking the strength or sex appeal of a sultry noir dame, has only her looks to play on. The romance between Bucky and Kay appears to be nothing more than two attractive people who look good cast next to each other. Hartnett plays his character with a sustained and commendable intensity, valiantly attempting to anchor the floundering
Dahlia
. Perhaps his sheer effort is what makes this unsatisfying film so haunting. Much like the disturbing murder at the heart of
Dahlia
, the film leaves its viewers to wonder how such a thing could happen. How could the sultry vixen, the handsome couple and the diabolical killing of a lost girl (played well by Mia Kirshner in black-and-white test screenings) not deliver? In the end,
The Black Dahlia
tries too hard and makes the audience work too much for too little payoff in return.
