The Black Dahlia

One of the most immediately striking things about The Black Dahlia is that it feels like a movie made in another era. Based on the 1987 James Ellroy novel, and molded by Brian De Palma into a more grisly and volatile echo of 1940s film noir, Dahlia works a sort of weird over stylized magic that depends largely on the audience’s ability to embrace this admittedly theatrical interpretation of 40s crime.

The film is nowhere near a factual telling of the famous Elizabeth Short murder. It’s an adaptation that twists the story sideways and backward, contriving it into a sinfully dangerous tale of society’s seedy underbelly. It could (and has) been dismissed as an overly elaborate and carbon dated movie that feels more like camp than serious filmmaking. Truthfully, the hook of the movie comes long after its opening. It’s the sort of production whose visuals and dialogue differ so strongly from most contemporary films that the mind and eyes might need a good 15 to 20 minutes to adjust to the extreme mood and style. To dismiss it at the first sign of an awkward phrasing or a painfully fatuous plot turn would be to miss out on the dark fun of its full 2 hour runtime.

Assuming you survive the initial leap into alternative style, there’s a roundabout but exciting mystery ahead that strings together considerably warped and violent elements to weave a story of murder, deception, betrayal, sex, and slaughter. The film focuses on the unfortunately named Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and his morally ambiguous partner, Lee Blanchard, (Aaron Eckhart) who both become enthralled in the case of Elizabeth Short, (Mia Kirshner) a young ingénue who suffers a particularly brutal murder. Their investigation of Short, leads them to a deeper well of sordid characters, including Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) a wealthy woman with a taste for indecent proposals. In one standout scene we see Bucky’s introduction to the mysterious Linscott family entirely from his perspective.

The film also stars Scarlett Johansson as Kay Lake who garners the affections of both Bucky and Lee in an odd love triangle that often feels like an unnecessary tangent to the story of Short’s murder. While providing Bucky and Lee with emotional investments beyond finding a killer works well for humanizing the otherwise rigid antiheroes at the film’s forefront, it often sedates the straight up thrills of the “Black Dahlia” investigation. The relationship used to the best effect here is the complex friendship between Lee and Bucky who are as close as they are competitive and often find themselves in tense conflict with one another throughout the film. Their love/hate relationship works more functionally in the proceedings of their difficult investigation and provides an emotional struggle in the otherwise clinical police case.

The Black Dahlia is a wild and often nonsensical ride, but it’s such a loving homage and so passionately mischievous that it really does become a brutal, dark hearted joy to watch. Despite its flaws, it remains sharp, grueling, and eerie to the very end.

Grade: B+