The Black Dahlia
Drama
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"The Black Dahlia" is based on actual events which occurred in Hollywood, California during the 1940s. The film follows two cops Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) who are investigating the horrific murder of Elizabeth Short. As Bucky continues to investigate the case, he soon finds out that the people closest to him may in some way be connected to one of Hollywood's most notorious unsolved mysteries.
To be honest, I was expecting "The Black Dahlia" to be one of my favorite films of the year. Unfortunately, the entire film was a major let down. The film started off at a decent pace, the acting in the beginning was rather solid, and lastly the direction by Brian De Palma was fantastic and really brought the 1940's back to life. But then about half way through, "The Black Dahlia" seemed to lose a lot of steam, became very hard to follow, and overloaded with twists. At this point, the acting also began to seem over the top and everyone involved just seemed to be forcing the material to the point where I literally just busted out laughing.
The story of "The Black Dahlia" is definitely an interesting one however the film tries too hard to be edgy and ultimately has one to many twists which makes the film seem overly long. There were some scenes which felt ultimately pointless and were used more as time filler than anything else. I also had a big problem with the fact that De Palma was trying to say Hilary Swank looked like Mia Kirshner because in my eyes the two don't look anything alike.
The acting in this film felt very forced even with many academy award winners and nominees being apart of the film. Josh Hartnett, who I normally can't stand, actually did the best job in the entire film. His character Bucky at least felt realistic and wasn't as forced like the other characters. My biggest disappointments as far as acting goes were the performances by Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank because both actresses are extremely talented and this film did not show of their talent at all. All of Johansson's lines felt forced and at times just seemed extremely unbelievable. Swank's overall character was not a good one for her, she didn't play a sexy temptress character well and this made the performance seem very poorly acted. Aaron Eckhart did a decent job with what little he had. Also, I have to say that Fiona Shaw should definitely win an award for giving such a horrid and over the top performance as Ramona Linscott. Every moment she was on screen was just painfully awful and laughably bad.
The film was directed by Brian De Palma who did an excellent job with capturing the 1940's as I previously stated however when it came to judging the acting in the film it almost seemed like he put his personal assistant in charge of that. It seemed like he worried so much about how beautiful the film looked rather than how well the overall movie was. The film was written by Josh Friedman who honestly hasn't had much experience writing films since he only wrote two previous screenplays one being the bad Keanu Reeves movie "Chain Reaction" and the other being "War of the Worlds" but does the latter really count since that movie didn't really have any substance at all? The script for "the Black Dahlia" seemed like it wanted too much from a single film and maybe if Friedman didn't try to make the film about twists rather than about an actual story it would have been better. Also if some of the smaller casting was better and if the movie about 25 minutes shorter, we may have had a better film.
In conclusion, I really wanted to like "The Black Dahlia" however about twenty minutes before it ended I just gave up on it and wanted it to end. The film was wonderfully shot, had so many talented people involved, and an interesting story yet for some reason, the majority film was completely forgettable once you leave the theater. How De Palma let this film fail on so many levels is beyond me since this the man directed many great films in the past including "The Untouchables." To say I was disappointed with "The Black Dahlia" is really an understatement since I was hoping to include this film on my top 10 at the end of the year. Sadly not even De Palma's wonderful directing nor can Scarlett's beauty save this sucker.
MovieManMenzel's final rating for "The Black Dahlia" is a 2/5. It's a promising film that ultimately doesn't live up to its excellent and promising marketing campaign.
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