Rating of
0.5/4
The Black Dahlia has a black heart
goodfellamike - wrote on 10/29/08
There are only a handful of characters in The Black Dahlia, a laughable and cardboard creation by former suspense-master Brian DePalma: The up-and-coming police officer and former boxer Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), his emotionally unstable partner Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), Blanchard’s current flame, Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson), femme fatale, Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) and her wealthy parents (Fiona Shaw and John Kavanaugh). Bucky and Lee are investigating the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, a young starlet whose mutilated body was found completely cut in half at the torso with all her organs removed and her mouth sliced ear to ear.
The film uses the real-life unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, but it is based on the fictional detective novel by James Ellroy (which actually identifies a killer). Unlike Ellroy’s other seedy Los Angeles based detective-novel, L.A. Confidential, this film oozes a phony 1940’s atmosphere and only in small doses do any of the characters feel believable, rather than a writer’s construction who uses just about every cliché known to noir: the femme fatale, the burned out detective, the sex bombshell, and characters who smoke six packs a day, etc. There are so many noir trappings going on that each story thread feels lifted out of any Humphrey Bogart movie. For a lot of The Black Dahlia’s running time, the audience is forced to endure so much chaotic and disjointed exposition that by the time the actual story of Elizabeth Short’s murder comes along, we have so many story threads and loose ends to tie up that the murder becomes secondary to love triangles, other criminal doings, personal problems of the officers and tired narration by the detective. There’s also an extended denoument that takes anti-climax to a whole new level. Plotlines rarely intersect in a unified way and the usually stylish direction of De Palma feels lethargic and dense. He apparently has no feel for time, place or incident. De Palma can also be blamed for the disastrous performances. Hartnett gives a vacuous portrayal of a cop searching for the truth, Eckhart is all fire and testosterone as the cop on the edge (his motives are never fully explained), Johansson is completely thankless, Fiona Shaw overacts in a drunken stupor and manages to be as annoying, loud and completely insane as possible; much of the same can be said of Swank, miscast as a sultry lesbian whose voice sounds as if she has swallowed a pine cone.
If the film has one good thing, it’s the brief performance of Mia Kershner, who appears only in a flashback and during a screen test as Elizabeth Short. I’m having difficulty deciding whether the performance of miss Kershner is that good, or that it’s just because she’s surrounded by so much that is that bad. FInal Grade: D-
