The mystery is how this movie ended up so bad

 

The Black Dahlia (2005)
Stars: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kirshner, and Hilary Swank
Director: Brian De Palma
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A publicity-hungry police detective (Eckhart) arranges to have himself and his younger partner (Hartnett) assigned to the grisly murder of a would-be actress (Kirshner). As one detective starts to mysteriously come unglued, the other uncovers not only dark secrets relating to the dead actress, but to his partner as well. 

The Black Dahlia is almost completely devoid of focus. The script moves randomly from plot to subplot to barely relevant stuff, with the Black Dahlia murder being relegated to just above a minor tangent among a whole tangle of plots and subplots. The style of the film also swings widely between filming styles--at some points, it's heavy-handedly apeing the filming styles of the 1930s and 40s (complete with obligatory soft focus on the leading ladies), at others he goes for an almost documentary style detachment, and then there's the incredibly annoying sequence when the camera suddenly takes the POV of what Hartnett's character is seeing, thus putting the audience in his shoes. Not only is this a pointless break in style, it is very badly done. 

And then there's the editing. There isn't a single shot in the film that lasts more than ten seconds and all quick edits and jumping around with the camera angles gets tiresome very fast. 

To make this already weak film as bad as possible, it is further burdened by an ending that is is completely and totally botched, with the solution to the Black Dahlia killing being completely nonsensical and the other Big Revelations not quite fitting with the rest of the story either. 

It's a shame this movie is such a mess, because many of the actors give some great performances that are in step with the film noir/crime drama movies of the 1930s and 1940s. 

 
Aaron Eckhart turns in a great performance as a crooked cop (I'm not spoiling anything here... the Eckhart character is a standard for the kind of movie being emulated) whose life has come to orbit around the one decent thing he's done in his life... the rescue of a young woman from a life prostitution (Johansson). It's a shame his performance and character are undermined by the awful script that introduces a late-movie twist that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

And then there's the hero of the tale, Hartnett's good-hearted, honest cop who is irrevokably tainted by the evil he encounters in the course of this film. His character is in genre, except that he spends too much time crying; it's okay for him to be sensitive, caring, and concerned with justice, but he shouldn't be getting weepy all the time. His character is, unfortunately, also undermined by the botched ending in the film and a particularly stupid scene where he shoots up the home of Swank's character. 

Someone couldn’t make up their mind what they were doing with this movie. Whatever potential it may have had is ruined by an inconsistent visual tone and a script that is messy, unfocused and internally inconsistent. It's a film that deserved to bomb and it's one that isn't worth the 2+ hours it's going to suck away from your life. It's one of those incompetently made films that falls in a zone of mediocrity that leaves it with no worthwhile aspect. 

In fact, the only Brian De Palma film worse than this one is his 2006 follow-up, Redacted. It's even more halfbaked than this one. 

'Knives Out' is a great Who-Dunnit

Knives Out (2019)
Starring: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Christopher Plummer, and LaKeith Stanfield
Director: Rian Johnson
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

The famous private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) teams with the local police to untangle the circumstances surrounding the death of an eccentric mystery writer (Plummer).

"Knives Out" is fun, tightly scripted update of the classic mystery novels/detective films where most of the characters in the tale had reason to see the victim dead, and the detective politely (for the most part) talks his way to unmasking the killer through interrogations in drawing rooms. Its main location is a throwback to both Agatha Christie novels and the Dark Old House movies of the 1920s and 1930s, while its all-star ensemble cast is like revisiting the movies of this genre from the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, with all these classic elements that will fill mystery movie lovers with nostalgia, this is a thoroughly modern story.

At all times, the film treats the "drawing room detective" and surrounding tropes with a level of respect that is rarely seen anymore, but, like the best films when the genre was in its heyday, it does it with equal degrees of drama and humor as it unfolds. There are many laugh-out-loud one-liners in the film, as well as a number of funny situations (my personal favorite is when the police detective played by LaKeith Stanfield declares "That was the dumbest car chase ever.", as the mystery is at its most convoluted), but the film never mocks or gets self-ironic with its subject matter--except in cases where characters are commenting on themselves.

Another element that makes "Knives Out" a great experience is that it plays fair. All the clues to the identity of the murderer (if there even was a murderer, because the victim's death would just have been written off as a suicide if a mysterious person hadn't sent Benoit Blanc an envelope of cash to investigate) are out there in the open, and all the stray bits that somehow relate to either including or excluding possible suspects as the story unfolds, eventually come into play. Even an apparent comment made by the man who will soon be a corpse in sorrowful reflection on his advanced age and the state of his family ends up being echoed with great effectiveness in the movie's climax.

At one point, I felt "Knives Out" was playing a little too fair with the viewers, because I thought I had figured out who the killer was early on--and even as more complications were thrown in and more actual details came to light, I remained certain I had guessed correctly. A few twists later, and I no longer cared if I was right or wrong... the ride to the solution getting more and more exciting and fun (and funny), and even if I thought I had the who, I still didn't have the complete how or why. Like Blanc says at one point, in what must be the most hilariously tortured metaphor in cinematic history, "Knives Out" was like a donut with a hole, within which another donut fit but it also has a hole...

If you enjoy classic murder mysteries and "who-dunnits" with an emphasis on wit, "Knives Out" is a great way to spend a couple of hours.