PREMIERE.COM'S MOVIE REVIEW (posted 9/14/06)

Caveat emptor true-crime fans: although it's being marketed as a feature-length episode of CSI: Hollywoodland, Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia actually has very little interest in investigating the facts surrounding one of the country's best-known unsolved mysteries. In that respect, the film is a fairly faithful translation of James Ellroy's novel, which also treated the brutal 1947 slaying of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short (who was given her more famous nickname by reporters covering the case) as one element in a sprawling L.A. story involving crooked cops, petty gangsters and a coltish femme fatale with one seriously screwed-up family. Where Ellroy took more than 300 pages to spin his yarn though, De Palma only has two hours, and the lack of breathing room is keenly felt. On the page, it's not necessarily a problem if the titular victim doesn't turn up for the first few chapters. But when thirty minutes of a 120-minute film pass by with nary a mention of Short, you can't help but wonder if you've wandered into the wrong movie.

The first quarter of The Black Dahlia is instead given over to a pair of fictional boxers-turned-beat cops Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). After beating him senseless in the ring, Lee brings Bucky into the department and also welcomes him into the home he shares with knockout dame (and onetime prostitute) Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). The three of them grow quite close, although Lee clearly has some anger issues that...wait, what's that you say? What about the Dahlia? Oh, all right. While working another case, Bleichert and Blanchard find themselves in the vicinity of a vacant lot where Short's mutilated body is discovered. Lee becomes immediately obsessed with finding the killer and, over his partner's objections, gets both of them assigned to the Dahlia case. Following up on a lead, Bucky meets Madeline Linscott (Hilary Swank), the man-hungry daughter of a local real estate tycoon and a dead-ringer for Short. As Bleichert unwisely grows closer to Madeline, he must also keep an eye on Kay and Lee, who are hiding secrets of their own.

Because this is a Brian De Palma production, The Black Dahlia is one of the most self-aware films to come along since...well, since De Palma's last movie, the entertainingly daffy Femme Fatale. Never one to make a straight genre picture, the director deliberately calls attention to the story's noir trappings, to the point where the entire movie feels as if its been filmed inside invisible air quotes. De Palma's camera framings emphasize the artificiality of the Bulgarian soundstages where the bulk of the movie was shot and he often uses Mark Isham's blaring score as a counterpoint to the onscreen action. The actors have been directed to give stylized performances as well, particularly Swank, who appears to be having a blast vamping it up as the bad little rich girl. The real scene-stealer, however, is Irish actress Fiona Shaw, in a small, but memorable role as Madeline's batshit crazy mother. As for the three leads, Eckhart effectively captures Lee's fiery rage (too bad he all but vanishes from the movie about halfway through) while Johansson radiates icy '40s glamour. And then there's our hero and narrator Hartnett, whose perpetual inexpressiveness actually comes in handy here. Like a lot of De Palma's male characters, Bucky isn't exactly the smartest tool in the shed and the actor is able to sell that naïveté without straining himself.

— Ethan Alter