Confidential
At the time the film takes place, no building in Los Angeles was allowed to be taller than City Hall, so the cameras were placed at certain points so that any building taller than City Hall would not be seen.,In one shot, when Bud White is dangling the D.A. out the window, the actor's safety cable is visible.,Captain Dudley Smith: Have you a valediction, boyo?
Jack Vincennes: [gasping out a name] ... Rollo Tamasi.
[laughs, painfully, to himself as he dies],At the end of all the credits, there is a brief scene from "Badge of Honor" featuring a onscreen dedication in honor Sgt. who served as an advisor to the film. The scene shows a black-and-white closing moment of "Badge of Honor" with the credits as Badge of Honor actor (Matt McCoy) closes the door on the HOMICIDE office and walks sorrowfully away.,In the Hong Kong television version, during the scene where Bud breaks into the interrogation room, the part where he removes all the bullets from the gun but one is removed for some reason. So it cuts straight from his coming into the room and then sticking the gun into the rapist's mouth without giving it a Russian roulette feel.,Featured in Siskel & Ebert: The Game/The End of Violence/L.A. Confidential/The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca (1997),Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive
Written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen
Performed by Johnny Mercer
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under license from EMI-Capitol Music Special Markets,When a film evokes an era as well as L.A. Confidential does, people take notice. It could be argued that it is easier to replicate the recent past than the distant on film, and in a sense this is true. Costumes, language, and the necessary absence of the modern in "period pieces" make them expensive and difficult to film. But couldn't it be argued that it is just as difficult to make a film about more recent periods? I have no knowledge of how a Victorian era table was set, or what a knight really spoke like; we are subject to the directors view of reality. But what if a good deal of your audience lived through the time you are portraying, as in the case of the 1950's? I can even envision my grandfather coming back from WW2 to a booming economy, and living in the world Curtis Hanson created.

The real genus of this film is that it creates not only a physical world, but one with all the politics, corruption, racism and inequity of the time. As a result we feel the characters motivations and understand their faults all the better; Bud White, Ed Exley, Lynn Bracken and Lana Turner all live here.

This film, like others that make us believe we are there for two hours (and $7.50), will endure. I was thinking a perfect double feature would be with Chinatown, another film that will stand the test of time.,