The Black Dahlia makes a valiant effort to recreate the surface of late ’40s film noir, with an omnipresent voice-over narration from a slightly jaded police detective (Minnesota’s Josh Hartnett), period costumes and sets, atmospheric lighting and music, and characters whose moral compass ranges from only slightly corrupt to downright bad.

      It has a veteran director, Brian DePalma, and an excellent cast, with three notable young stars: Hartnett (Pearl Harbor), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation), and two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby).

      What it lacks is a clear narrative thread.  It’s one thing to present a complex tangle of plot, quite another to weave in so many seemingly unconnected events that the viewer has long since given up making sense of things by the time you unravel things. The result is a stylishly filmed but somewhat overlong and ultimately rather empty exercise in film-making.

      The first minutes set up a boxing match between Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), former boxers now working as policemen.  The bout serves two narrative purposes, either of which could have been handled more efficiently or omitted: it explains how the two men become friends and partners, and it establishes Dwight’s feet of clay as he throws the fight to advance his police career.

      And this is the most morally upright character in the film!

      As the partnership develops, we meet Lee’s girlfriend, Kay Lake (Johansson), a former prostitute who seems much more interested in Dwight than in her ostensible boyfriend.  (A particular local interest – her character originally hails from Sioux Falls.)  We see the two pugilist-detectives make a series of significant arrests.  We’re maybe 20 minutes into the film – and all of this has simply been a prelude to the main story.

      They are drawn into the investigation of a grisly murder: an aspiring starlet (Mia Kirshner) has been murdered, her body mutilated and dumped behind a building where Lee and Dwight have just had a shoot-out with some unrelated bad guys. The cops and the press quickly dub her “the Black Dahlia” by the cops and the press, for reasons that are ultimately unimportant.

      Various interesting characters come and go without advancing the investigation, including the dead girl’s seemingly unmoved father, her equally unconcerned roommate (Rose McGowan of Charmed in a Cleopatra costume), and an underage actress with whom the victim had made a lesbian porn film. 

      Eventually, Dwight finds himself dining with the wealthy Madeleine Linscott (Swank) and her odd family – her Scottish father, a clearly insane mother, and a sex-crazed younger sister who draws a pornographic sketch of Dwight.  He and Madeleine make passionate love, which complicates his relationship with Kay, though not enough to keep him from making even more passionate love with her.

      At this point, most of the audience is scratching their heads trying to determine what is going on, what all these people have to do with each other, and whether anyone has a working sense of morality.

      All is thankfully explained in the last ten minutes, but by then I’m not sure I cared that much who killed whom.

            Audience warning: It’s perhaps to be expected in a film by the director of Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables, but be prepared for some fairly bloody scenes and a high body count.  There is also a healthy serving of the “F word” throughout.      

        This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on September 17,  2006.

Return to Wally Hastings's Film Reviews.
Return to Wally Hastings's Home Page.

This page last updated on September 19, 2006.