THE BLACK DAHLIA

"Every life it touched, it consumed."

THE BLACK DAHLIA starts out with a bang; a gorgeous, seductive neo-noir that lures its audience in quickly with its set designs and expert camerawork, director Brian De Palma's (THE UNTOUCHABLES, FEMME FATALE, SCAREFACE) specialty. Another signature of many of De Palma's films are how they spin out of control fast, which the disappointing DAHLIA does.

The film takes place in post-World War II Los Angeles, where detectives Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard investigate the almost unimaginably gory murder of a young actress with a rocky past. The cops are played by Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart, and neither has been this dull in a long time. There is a thin line between subtle and boring, and they both trip on that line, trying to be cool and calm, instead ending up montonous. By the end of the film I didn't care about either of their personal drama or their conflicts. Hell, I could barely keep awake.

By the end of the film, two femme fatales are thrown in the mix. Scarlett Johansson, as much as I like her, is just playing the love interest/sexy of the film, just like she's done in THE ISLAND, MATCH POINT, and THE PRESTIGE, and Hilary Swank is horribly miscast as a woman who slept with the victim, because she "wanted to see what it would be like being with a woman who looked like her". Swank is one of the finest actresses in Hollywood, but she's not that kind of fine.

In the end, the standard noir characters have been thrown in the mix: the offbeat supporting characters, the dark people that are basically screaming that they're suspects without actually saying it, and they all come off as boring sketches of better characters of the past. THE BLACK DAHLIA looks good, but it's boring as hell, nothing new, and features lackluster performances and writing throughout. It's a shame they ruined James Ellroy's book, instead of turning it into a modern crime masterpiece, like Curtis Hanson did with his sexy ensemble, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. Instead, this is just another clunker from De Palma.

C-