Movie Review - "The Black Dahlia"

For those not familiar with the inspiration for The Black Dahlia, the film is based on the never solved murder in California of movie actress Elizabeth Short. The movie borrows heavily from James Leroy's novel of the same name. This is Hollywood's second crack at covering this type of film noir territory with one of Elroy's novels. The first ended up in the outstanding L.A. Confidential. This attempt ends in a remarkable failure.

The tagline for the movie is that it is "Inspired by the most notorious unsolved murder in California history," yet the script never leaves you with the impression that anyone outside of the detectives working on the case actually cared at all about who murdered Elizabeth Short. The key problem with this movie is that lead actor role is woefully miscast with Josh Hartnett starring as Officer Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert. This role was clearly intended to show Hartnett as a serious leading man but he simply can't pull it off. He brings no passion to the role and seems very uncomfortable having to show the different emotions needed for the role.

What's worse is that Aaron Eckhart, playing Bucky's former boxing opponent (a subplot of almost zero importance or reason) and partner Sgt. Leland "Lee" Blanchard, is terrific in his role. Unfortunately Eckhart is saddled with bad writing and a mental breakdown that does not seem at all plausible. Scarlett Johansson is also given poor dialogue to work with as the woman in both officers lives, Kay Lake, a former call girl who is in a panic because her former boss and tormenter is getting out of jail (which is another subplot of no value to the story). She fights through the poorly defined role as best she can and looks completely at home as a 1940's Hollywood lady.

Hilary Swank and Mia Kirshner are also strong in their roles as society girl Madeliene Linscott (whose father is one of the prime suspects) and Elizabeth Short respectively. Both capture the quirky characteristics and needs of their characters and seem to be having fun with the roles. I just wish I could say the same about watching the movie.

The movie goes completely off the rails in the third act as it tries to juggle far too many possible murder scenarios and by the time the murder is solved you are just happy to be getting out of the theater. This is a prime example of what happens when you try to match potentially strong material to a poor lead actor, a lousy director, in this case Brian De Palma, and a weak script. If you are in the mood for a good 1940's film noir go rent L.A. Confidential again.

Rating: 2/10