`L.A. Confidential' -- A Cop Movie That Finally Gets It Right

Movie review XXXX "L.A. Confidential," with Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, Danny DeVito. Directed by Curtis Hanson, from a script by Hanson and Brian Helgeland, based on James Ellroy's novel. Alderwood, Auburn Cinema 17, Crossroads, East Valley 13, Everett Mall 4-10, Factoria, Guild 45th, Harvard Exit, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, SeaTac North. 138 minutes. "R" - Restricted because of violence, language.

Curtis Hanson's witty new corrupt-cop thriller, "L.A. Confidential," is loosely based on real crimes against the Los Angeles public in the 1950s, and it does an extraordinary job of evoking that era. Yet somehow it feels as contemporary as Rodney King.

How ironic that it should arrive so close on the heels of the plodding, obvious "Cop Land," which has a modern setting but feels as if it had been produced in the 1950s. "L.A. Confidential" even contains a parody of a 1950s television cop show, Jack Webb's "Dragnet," that's fresher than most of "Cop Land."

The technical adviser to this whitewash show, called "Badge of Honor," is a smug veteran cop, Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), who also arranges busts of celebrities for a shameless tabloid journalist (Danny DeVito). Vincennes has become so casually corrupt and addicted to this extracurricular income that he's literally forgotten why he became a policeman. Early on, he offhandedly offers part of a bribe to the department's straight-arrow officer, Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), who coldly turns it down.

Exley is on his way up, and he doesn't have much use for cops like Vincennes. In particular, he can't wait to get rid of Bud White (Russell Crowe), a thuggish type who prefers to shoot first and provide explanations and phony evidence later. Their seasoned, cynical boss, Capt. Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), admires White for his efficiency and tries to keep a lid on Exley.

Despised by almost everyone in the department, Exley appears to be the story's hero, yet this is no "Serpico." While he may be a golden boy, he's also a prig, a humorless workaholic and something of a publicity hound. White, for his part, has a comprehensible motive for his brutality, which is most often directed at perpetrators of domestic abuse. Because the true villains are elsewhere, it makes sense that these apparent opposites would eventually discover a bond.

One reason "L.A. Confidential" feels so new is the casting. Crowe and Pearce are not the usual suspects. They're not even Americans. Fans of Australian films may recognize Crowe from "Proof" and "Romper Stomper," but how many moviegoers will know that Pearce played one of the Aussie drag queens in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"?

Whatever you think you know about them going into this picture, you'll come out wondering how they so completely transformed themselves into American policemen of nearly half a century ago. They inhabit these characters, telling us something new about them with each sharply etched scene. But then the same can be said of Spacey, Cromwell, David Strathairn as an elusive millionaire and Kim Basinger as a hooker who trades on her resemblance to Veronica Lake.

It helps that they're working with a gifted cinematographer (Dante Spinotti), a composer with deep roots in this genre (Jerry Goldsmith of "Chinatown") and a great script. Boiling down James Ellroy's complicated 500-page novel, while focusing on White, Exley and Vincennes and the plot lines that tie them together, couldn't have been easy.

Hanson and his co-writer, Brian Helgeland (who also co-wrote Kevin Costner's new picture, "The Postman"), do it all so smoothly that they've hidden every trace of effort. Even the ironic use of period songs makes a major contribution here.

Hanson has directed a number of clever suspense films ("The River Wild," "The Bedroom Window," filmed-in-Tacoma "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle"), but this one puts everything else he's done in the shade. "L.A. Confidential" is at the same time his most personal movie and Hollywood filmmaking at its best.