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I slogged my way through The Black Dahlia this week, and I'm here to keep you from doing the same. This is an AWFUL movie. Just awful. You'd think that a film starring Aaron Eckhart, Hillary Swank, Scarlett Johansson, and Josh Hartnett would be pretty decent, but NOT SO.
The story is about two detectives (Hartnett and Eckhart) who work together and just happen to be in love with the same woman (Johansson). The two detectives are working on the murder case of a young woman, who was killed in such a grisly manner that her death has captured public attention.
The script is a tragedy. There are no real characters, as the actors seem to be playing someone completely different in each and every scene. Some of the character arcs MUST have ended up on the cutting-rrom floor, because characters veer in wildly different directions from one scene to the next, with no adequate explanation as to the huge shifts (and alot of the movie supposedly happens over the course of one week). For example, in Johansson's first scene, you think, "Oh, she seems like an educated wise ass. Got it." Then, she goes all Betty Crocker on us for the next several scenes. She's madly in love with one man one minute, his partner the next. Ditto for Eckhart's character, who apparently first takes the case because it's high profile and will help his career (Opportunist. Got it.), and then becomes mentally unbalanced and completely obsessed with the dead girl, over the course of ONE scene change. (Eh?)
Hartnett's character is just rather vague and muddy. Swank's is inexplicable. The only decent performance in the whole she-bang was that of Mia Kirshner, who played the unfortunate victim.
It also doesn't help that the whole story is a nonsensical, depressing gore-fest, peppered with gratuitous nudity and profanity. Ick.
Avoid this movie at all costs. The ONLY redeeming thing about it: it led me to discover that the case of the black dahlia is REAL, based on an unsolved murder in LA in the 1940s. That sent me to the Web, which is the only place I found anything of actual interest.
The story is about two detectives (Hartnett and Eckhart) who work together and just happen to be in love with the same woman (Johansson). The two detectives are working on the murder case of a young woman, who was killed in such a grisly manner that her death has captured public attention.
The script is a tragedy. There are no real characters, as the actors seem to be playing someone completely different in each and every scene. Some of the character arcs MUST have ended up on the cutting-rrom floor, because characters veer in wildly different directions from one scene to the next, with no adequate explanation as to the huge shifts (and alot of the movie supposedly happens over the course of one week). For example, in Johansson's first scene, you think, "Oh, she seems like an educated wise ass. Got it." Then, she goes all Betty Crocker on us for the next several scenes. She's madly in love with one man one minute, his partner the next. Ditto for Eckhart's character, who apparently first takes the case because it's high profile and will help his career (Opportunist. Got it.), and then becomes mentally unbalanced and completely obsessed with the dead girl, over the course of ONE scene change. (Eh?)
Hartnett's character is just rather vague and muddy. Swank's is inexplicable. The only decent performance in the whole she-bang was that of Mia Kirshner, who played the unfortunate victim.
It also doesn't help that the whole story is a nonsensical, depressing gore-fest, peppered with gratuitous nudity and profanity. Ick.
Avoid this movie at all costs. The ONLY redeeming thing about it: it led me to discover that the case of the black dahlia is REAL, based on an unsolved murder in LA in the 1940s. That sent me to the Web, which is the only place I found anything of actual interest.
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