The Black Dahlia
Starring: Josh Harnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
Director: Brian De Palma
The film: Elizabeth Short was a wannabe actress who washed up in post-war Hollywood looking for a lucky break. It never came. She was found - her corpse mutilated and hacked in half - in an empty lot, and she was labelled 'The Black Dahlia' by the tabloid press, due to her resemblance to the lead actress in a popular film of the time. Her case has never been solved.
In his brilliant novel centred on the case, crime writer James Ellroy sought to piece together what might have gone on with Short, and how she came to meet her sorry end. And, as with LA Confidential - the previous Ellroy novel to get the Hollywood treatment - the beauty of his work lies in its collection of characters, of street-smart, rapid-fire dialogue and of countless twists and turns. In short, his novels seem tailor-made for cinema.
Sad, then, that when Brian 'Scarface' De Palma got hold of the rights for this production, he collected a bunch of Hollywood's brightest talents, spent a wedge on recreating the California of the late 1940s and 50s, and then somehow robbed the story of any real interest. By its end, the whole sorry mess has descended into overblown farce.